Chernenko, the Last Bolshevik: Soviet Union on the Eve of Perestroika

Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko, a figure who appeared to the outside worid as a commonplace Russian bureaucrat cut from the mold of a Gogol short story, was elevated in 1984 to the post of general sec retary of the Communist party of the Soviet Union. Thus, a post held by such awesome, fearsome figures as Lenin and Stalin passed into the hands of someone perceived as a nondescript bureaucrat, de void of ideas or initiative, and crippled by old age and infirmity.A singular merit of this wor...