A review by will_cotton4
Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire by David Remnick

5.0

A sprawling, masterful account of the end of the Soviet Union. I suspect I'll think about this book a lot in years to come. It's a long but rewarding read, exploring the slow retreat of communism from the perspective of several of the interested groups, from hardline reactionaries to ultranationalist to liberal dissidents to Kazakh peasants. The result is an impressionistic rendering of Soviet consciousness over perhaps 10 years of its final decline and rupture.

It's been said that most nonfiction books should really be essays, and I generally agree. At nearly 700 pages, I'm surprised to find myself counting Lenin's Tomb as an exception. Every page is worth reading. Strongly recommended.