Lenin's Tomb

The Last Days of the Soviet Empire (Pulitzer Prize Winner)

By: David Remnick

Narrated by: Michael Prichard

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
One of the Best Books of the Year: The New York Times

From the editor of The New Yorker: a riveting account of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which has become the standard book on the subject. Lenin’s Tomb combines the global vision of the best historical scholarship with the immediacy of eyewitness journalism. Remnick takes us through the tumultuous 75-year period of Communist rule leading up to the collapse and gives us the voices of those who lived through it, from democratic activists to Party members, from anti-Semites to Holocaust survivors, from Gorbachev to Yeltsin to Sakharov. An extraordinary history of an empire undone, Lenin’s Tomb stands as essential reading for our times.

Critic reviews

An engrossing and essential addition to the human and political literature of our time." —The New York Times

The most eloquent chronicle of the Soviet empire's demise published to date.... It is hard to conceive of a work that might surpass it."—Francine du Plessix Gray, Washington Post Book World

"An eloquent and riveting oral history of an epochal moment of change." —Michael Ignatieff, The Los Angeles Times

"Remnick ... has achieved a very rare feat: to make the reader feel he has been present himself at a great turning point in history. It is a stunning book, moving and vivid from the first page to last." —Robert A. Caro

"Utterly absorbing.... If you did not have the opportunity to witness the Soviet empire in its death throes, Lenin's Tomb will take you there." —Jack F. Matlock, Jr.

Great book, annoying reading

The reader has a staccato style. It sounds like you are listening to a 1950’s news broadcast, Richard Murrow comes to mind. Not pleasant.

A mixed bag

In the last 50 years there have been few events as important in geo politics as the fall of the Soviet Union and so that event desperately needed a close and thorough examination to see what actually happened, how it happened and what it portended for the future. Mr Remnick, a reporter in the Soviet Union during that time period, has attempted to give us that book, and has both succeeded and failed.

First, the writing itself is superb, almost lyrical at times, and covers a great deal of ground. Often a chapter will start with some individual not known to the general public and we can see through his actions the forces at work behind the scenes of larger events. The first example in the book is that of Colonel Tretetsky who was in charge of the examination of the murdered Polish soldiers near Kalinin. The examination and cataloging of what Stalin had ordered done was at the order of the Soviet government but the KGB tried to derail the examination and ordered it stopped. Through the actions of the colonel we see how average Soviet citizens reacted to events and how that gave a portrait of what was happening in the wider society.

I found every chapter full of information and extremely informative, but often it was hard to see how some of the small details added anything important to the book. Mr Remnick spends a great deal of time talking about his efforts to interview Lazar Kaganovich, the last Stalin intimate still alive at the time. While the ins and outs of his attempts to speak with him are interesting in themselves they do not add anything to the tale of the fall of the Soviet Union. Similarly Mr Remnick seems to not only have had no idea of how harmful some of his actions were during this time, but to not care. He tells the tale of how some Soviet officials, seeing where events were heading, became businessmen themselves. In one report he detailed how these officials were meeting with American businessmen and the two specific names he gave were both Jewish. The official tried to explain how such reporting added to the general anti-semitism in the Soviet Union and Mr Remnick, himself Jewish, but a protected foreigner, seems unable to understand or even care about what he has done. Such things only serve to detract from the book itself and from the author's reputation.

Aside from these detractions the book itself is very good and gives insight into what was happening at the time that was not reported in the US, and found it changed my views of both Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, the former for the worse and the latter for the better. Still the book's foresight is limited and there is little indication of where the new Russian state might be headed. The book ends in the early 1990s and it seems indicative of that lack of foresight that the name Vladimir Putin never is mentioned anywhere in the book.

Mr Prichard's narration is superb and perfectly matched for the subject. I highly recommend this book, but with the understanding of its limitations.

GREAT LISTEN

This is a great book, covering so much history.
Since I love history, I have studied much about Russia and still continue to do so, hence I came upon this book.
None of the chapters are boring or overly long.
The author comes right to the point.
As usual the narrator, Michael Prichard, is a pleasure to listen to.
My thanks to all involved, JK.

Both Educational & Enjoyable

I enjoyed every minute and gained some understanding of Russian and Soviet history, not just the Gorbachev years. Wonderful reporting and clear narration. My only disappointment is the book coming to an end and finding no audio of the sequel, Resurrection!

Great read.

The access to the rich cast of characters is unlikely to occur again in our lifetimes. For the full understanding of the Russian enigma a window is opened by this stellar account. Thank you.