SIGNED BY AUTHOR AND HIS WIFE
Memoirs
Doubleday, 1996.
First UK edition. Heather boards with titles in silver lettering to the spine in a photographic dustwrapper featuring the author. Cartographic endpapers of the Sovient Union (front) and the Russian Federation (rear). Signed by the author and his wife, Raisa Gorbacheva. Sixteen pages of photographic plates with captions. A near fine copy, with some spotting to the page edges but clean internally, and slight fading around the edges of the boards, in a very good dustwrapper indeed, with a few small spots to the front and rear covers.
The last president of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev played an instrumental role in ending the Cold War, the fall of the Iron Curtain, and shaping the Western geopolitical map as it is known today. Raised to the position of General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1985, Gorbachev sought to reform what he saw as the failures of the USSR, looking outward towards the free market and trade deals with the Western world. He won the Nobel Peace prize in 1990, the same year he became president of the USSR, for his role in the fall of the Berlin Wall. Only a year later he was forced to resign by a military coup, hated for his decisions within his own country.
Gorbachev met his wife Raisa at Moscow University, where he studied Law and she Philosophy. After university, Raisa began her own career as a lecturer and doctoral candidate in Marxist-Leninist Philosophy and Sociology. However, during her husband's presidency she took her place publicly by his side, redefining what it meant to be the USSR's First Lady. Raisa was herself a controversial figure, championed by the West for her political involvement, knowledge and glamour as much as she was hated for it within the Soviet Union.
Gorbachev's Memoirs details his time in office and his sentiments towards the state of Russia since his expulsion from office. Both husband and wife rose and fell in popularity throughout their political careers, yet remain a united front as pivotal figures of late 20th century politics.
Stock ID: 47178
