ABSTRACT
David Remnick’s two books, Lenin’s Tomb (that is, the Soviet Union) and Resurrection (of what, remains to be seen), were written by a correspondent who met most of the celebrities, heard most of the stories, and witnessed most of the main events during the last days of the Soviet Union and the first days of the presumably resurrected Russia. A kind of immediacy is conveyed by Remnick’s account of who was drunk and who was sober, who was wise and who was a fool, among those who ran the Soviet Union and then Russia from 1985 to 1996. When Prime Minister Chernomyrdin drank to a friend on his birthday with the toast, “Za vas, za nas, i za gaz” (To you, to us, and to gas), you get a good idea of where the former comrade in charge of the So viet gas and oil industry, now prime minister, is coming from. And possi bly where he is going, with Russia in tow.
