This updated and expanded biographical directory is the first in the series of directories published by Radio Liberty since 1981 to include photographs. The volume provides detailed information about the careers and lives of current members of top Soviet party and government bodies, officials of the armed forces, and diplomats. Also represented are a number of middle-ranking officials who stand a good chance of attaining top-level posts in the next few years. Entries are in alphabetical order, and each entry includes a biographical sketch, a career chronology, a summary of the content of published articles and speeches, and details of political alignment and connections. The volume is current through summer 1990 and documents the substantial recent turnover in party organizations such as the Central Committee and in state bodies such as the newly elected Council of People's Deputies. It is an indispensable reference for scholars, business people, journalists, government officials, and others trying to follow the rapid changes taking place in the USSR.

From 1982 to 1985, the period on which this book focuses, the Soviet Union was governed by a succession of ailing old men—Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko—who, supported by an equally elderly Politburo, were often physically incapable of controlling and directing the bureaucratic state machine and party organization. This unprecedented situation precipitated a secret and bitter power struggle within the top Soviet leadership between two main factions: the Chernenko apparatchiks, who had risen to power under Brezhnev and owed their positions to him; and the supporters of Andropov, including the younger, more dynamic, and power-hungry members of the party elite, who had been advocating fairly bold reforms to deal with the grave social and economic problems facing the USSR. Dr. Hazan provides a detailed analysis of this hidden power struggle as he examines the final years of Brezhnev's reign and the brief ascendancies of Andropov and Chernenko. These rapid changes led to the demise of the old guard in the Politburo and the emergence of a new breed of leader in Mikhail Gorbachev, culminating in the final consolidation of his power at the 27th CPSU Congress. Drawing on an extensive range of primary sources and using vivid examples of how the factions exploited the gigantic propaganda machine of the Soviet mass media, the author looks behind the Kremlin's walls to explore the essence of Soviet politics. The book describes the power base of each of the recent Soviet leaders and analyzes the steps they took to consolidate their positions and tighten controls over the bureaucracy and the military.

This ground-breaking book examines the Soviet ruling elite over the entire period of Communist rule. It serves as a collective biography of nearly two thousand people who served on the Communist Party's Central Committee from 1917 to 1991. The book is based on archival research, only available after the collapse of communism, and extensive interviews with former Central Committee members.

Drawing on newly accessible archives as well as memoirs and other sources, this biographical dictionary documents the lives of some two thousand notable figures in twentieth-century Central and Eastern Europe. A unique compendium of information that is not currently available in any other single resource, the dictionary provides concise profiles of the region's most important historical and cultural actors, from Ivo Andric to King Zog. Coverage includes Albania, Belarus, the Czech and Slovak Republics, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Moldova, Ukraine, and the countries that made up Yugoslavia.

First published in 1999, this volume is the first full length study of one of the most important political institutions of the erstwhile Soviet political system – the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). The originality of this work lies in its main argument that the central reform during Perestroika was that of the Party and the State – a reform which ultimately resulted in the CPSU and its institutions, the Central Committee being one of the most vital among them – firstly, surrendering the monopoly over political power and control over the instrumentalities of the State and secondly, systematically de-institutionalising and dismantling the formidable Soviet political system. The seeds of transformation and the shape of politico-economic and socio-cultural systems that emerged in successor States were laid down during the Soviet era – in particular during Perestroika itself. The continuity is, therefore, as striking as the change – if not more so.