This reference work surveys the leaders of Russia and the Soviet Union- from Michael, the first Romanov tsar in 1613, through the creation and dissolution of the Soviet Union, to the present day President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin. Chronologically arranged, these biographies paint a thorough yet succinct portrait of 30 leaders including discussion about the family and education of each ruler, important legislation, events, and wars under each leader's rule; and each leader's achievements and impact on Russia or the Soviet Union.

This volume analyzes various aspects of the political leadership during the collapse of the Soviet Union and formation of a new Russia. Comparing the rule of Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, and Vladimir Putin, the book reflects upon their goals, governing style, and sources of influence—as well as factors that influenced their activities and complicated them too. Contents Introduction Archie Brown Transformational Leaders Compared: Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin Archie Brown Evaluating Gorbachev and Yeltsin as Leaders George W. Breslauer From Yeltsin to Putin: The Evolution of Presidential Power Lilia Shevtsova Political Leadership and the Center-Periphery Struggle: Putin's Administrative Reforms Eugene Huskey Conclusion Lilia Shevtsova

Surveys the history of the Soviet Union through the exploits and achievements of the seven men who were its leaders from 1917 to 1991; Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, Konstantin Chernenko, and Mikhail Gorbachev.

First published in 1982, this book explores how Khrushchev and Brezhnev manipulated their policies and personal images as they attempted to consolidate their authority as leader. Central issues of Soviet domestic politics are examined: investment priorities, incentive policy, administrative reform, and political participation. The author rejects the conventional images of Khrushchev as an embattled consumer advocate and decentraliser, and of Brezhnev’s leadership as dull and conservative. He looks at how they dealt with the task of devising programs that combined the post-Stalin elite’s goals of consumer satisfaction and expanded political participation with traditional Soviet values.

Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction The definitive biography of the transformational Russian leader by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Khrushchev. "Essential reading for the twenty-first [century]." —Radhika Jones, The New York Times Book Review When Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union in 1985, the USSR. was one of the world’s two superpowers. By 1989, his liberal policies of perestroika and glasnost had permanently transformed Soviet Communism, and had made enemies of radicals on the right and left. By 1990 he, more than anyone else, had ended the Cold War, and in 1991, after barely escaping from a coup attempt, he unintentionally presided over the collapse of the Soviet Union he had tried to save. In the first comprehensive biography of the final Soviet leader, William Taubman shows how a peasant boy became the Soviet system’s gravedigger, how he clambered to the top of a system designed to keep people like him down, how he found common ground with America’s arch-conservative president Ronald Reagan, and how he permitted the USSR and its East European empire to break apart without using force to preserve them. Throughout, Taubman portrays the many sides of Gorbachev’s unique character that, by Gorbachev’s own admission, make him "difficult to understand." Was he in fact a truly great leader, or was he brought low in the end by his own shortcomings, as well as by the unyielding forces he faced? Drawing on interviews with Gorbachev himself, transcripts and documents from the Russian archives, and interviews with Kremlin aides and adversaries, as well as foreign leaders, Taubman’s intensely personal portrait extends to Gorbachev’s remarkable marriage to a woman he deeply loved, and to the family that they raised together. Nuanced and poignant, yet unsparing and honest, this sweeping account has all the amplitude of a great Russian novel.

Boris Yeltsin is one of modern history's most dynamic and underappreciated figures. In this vivid, analytical masterwork, Herbert J. Ellison establishes Yeltsin as the principal leader and defender of Russia's democratic revolution - the very embodiment of Russia's fragile new liberties, including the evolving respect for the rule of law and private property as well as core freedoms of speech, religion, press, and political association. In 1987 President Mikhail Gorbachev expelled Boris Yeltsin from his team of reform politicians, but Yeltsin rebounded from this potentially devastating setback to become the leader of the Russian democratic movement. He created a new office of Russian president, to which he was elected; designed a democratic constitution for the Soviet Union that precipitated a coup attempt by traditionalist communist leaders; granted independence to the nations of the Soviet Union; and replaced Communist Party rule with democracy and the socialist economy with a market economy. In a short period, he had succeeded in becoming the first popularly elected leader in a thousand years of Russian history. He had blocked violent attempts at counter-revolution and overcome powerful resistance to his reform program. His achievements rank among the most extraordinary feats of political leadership in the twentieth century.