William Taubman.
WILLIAM TAUBMAN
GORBACHEV: HIS LIFE AND TIMES (2017)
Mikhail Gorbachev (born 1931) was the last leader of the Soviet Union, serving from 1985 untill the abolition of the union in 1991. He studied law at Moscow State University, obtaining his degree in 1955. After graduation he was employed by the Komsomol youth organisation. He was a keen supporter of Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization, and in 1970 was appoint First Party Secretary of the Stavropol Regional Committee. His responsibilities included oversight of the construction of the Great Stavropol Canal. He joined the Politburo of the USSR in 1979. He was elected as leader of the Politburo in 1985. He initiated great changes in the USSR, notably Glasnost (opening up freedom of speech and the press) and Perestroika (decentralising economic decision making). After the dissolution of the Soviet Union he resigned the presidency, giving way to his successor Boris Yeltsin.
The Guardian described Taubman’s biography of Gorbachev as: 'A phenomenally researched life of the man who did more than any other to change Europe and the world in the last half of the 20th century'. The New York Review of Books wrote: ‘A masterpiece of narrative scholarship. It is also the first comprehensive biography of this world-historical figure. Other chronicles of Gorbachev’s life and verdicts on his record will follow, but they will be without the trove of personal insights that Taubman has gleaned from his access to Gorbachev himself, his advisers, and other participants in those dramatic years.’
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William Taubman (born 1941) is Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. He obtained his BA from Harvard University, and his MA and PhD from Columbia University, His biography of Nikita Kruschev won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 2004. He is the son of Nora Stern, a teacher, and Howard Taubman who was a critic for both music and theatre at the New York Times.
