Question by : What are some good books covering the leaders of the USSR?
and preferably something more than one page on Yuri Andropov.
Answers and Views:
Answer by Spellbound
Robert Service’s trilogy, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin are all excellent.
Simon Sebag Montefiore’s Stalin, the Court of the Red Tsar and Young Stalin are both very good. Sergo Beria’s Beria, My Father is a fascinating account of the head of the NKVD, Lavrentiy Beria.
J Arch Getty’s biography of Yezhov is a interesting account of the head of the NKVD during the Great Purge.
As for books containing more than a few pages on Andropov…
Few books cover him in any detail, except to demonstrate how the roots of perestroika were planted by Andropov, however, Richard Sakhwa’s Gorbachev and his Reforms had quite a bit about him – about how Andropov;s reforms formed the basis for Gorbachev’s. And Zhores Medvedev has written a biography about him. I haven’t read this, so I can’t comment on it, but Medvedev is a very good historian.
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