The struggle and the triumph: An autobiography

Brief Reviews Do not expect breathtaking revelations from this rather dull and selfserving memoir. Like many of his friends among the children of the 20th Congress (the 1956 communist conclave when Khrushchev denounced, for party consumption only, Stalin’s crimes), Burlatsky apparently remains a prisoner of the reform-communist perspective. Instead of engaging in genuine soul-searching, he portrays himself as a victim of the dogmatists within the party leadership. His “resistance” was always fUmy within the propaganda apparatus, either as speechwriter for the top leaders, or as a commentator, that is, as an apologist for the party line in the pages of ptwti. At its best, Burlatsky’s book offers suggestive glimpses into the minds of Khrushchev and Andropov and particularly juicy gossip about Brezhnev and his camarilla. Brezhnev is described as a half-literate, jealous, Philistine individual, more interested in women and luxurious cars than in ideological matters. But the book does not thoroughly and analytically explore the mechanisms that made possible seven decades of Sovietism. Based primarily on Khrushchev’s memoirs, limited in its scope, and unimpressive in its psychological digressions, it adds not much to the previous literature on Khrushchev and Khrushchevism. The Struggle and the Triumph An Autobiogmphy. By Lech Walesa. New York: Arcade Publishing, 1992. 336 pp. $24.95. If former Czechoslovak president Vaclav Have1 symbolized the politics of truth, Walesa has mastered the politics of success. But two years after his election as Poland’s president, a new class of professional politicians -comprised of lawyers, economists, and managers - is gaining the upperhand, and it begins to appear that Walesa’s pragmatic improvisations may soon lose their appeal. Unfortunately, the reader of Walesa’s autobiography will learn little of all this, for iThe Struggle and the Ttiumpb is less an autobiography than an account of Walesa’s trips and conversations with famous personalities. It contains little information about the struggles within Solidarity that led to the union’s breakup and the mounting conflict between Walesa and the Polish intellectual elite. As Walesa proudly states, he is not prone to melancholy reflections on the meandering ways of politics: his strong point has precisely been the capacity to adjust himself to changes in the public mood, even if this meant challenging those who have been his closest associates for more than a decade. In sum, Walesa’s memoir unwittingly reveals the workings of the authors mind and personality: realistic, confident, generous, and gregarious; yet also cunning, egocentric, and unpredictable. Unfortunately, the books contents do not go beyond superlicial and even banal considerations about well-known facts, individuals, and situations. Voices in a Revolutkm The Collapse of East German Cd By Melvin E. La&y. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1992. 123 pp. $21.95. Despite its brevity, Voices in a Remlution is a profoundly original interpretation of the cultural and political tensions in the German Democratic

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