Lenin's Tomb is one of those rare books that define a moment in history, in this case the collapse of the Soviet empire. When prize-winning journalist David Remnick arrived in Moscow in 1988 as a correspondent for The Washington Post, Gorbachev's reforms had already commenced. As Remnick sees it, the most important of these was the restoration of truth, the truth about the brutal Soviet past and the bleak Soviet present. Like an irresistible stimulant, each new revelation demanded another and soon the process became irreversible. The return of history is Renmick's theme. It is also the essence of the revolution that toppled the Soviet system.The leaders of this revolution - Gorbachev, Sakharov, and Yeltsin, whose portraits in this book are unforgettable - embodied this theme and were shaped by it, but it was not, as Remnick shows, these leaders by themselves who restored the truth to the Soviet people. History returned to the Soviet Union like a tide, sweeping over everything in its path. Part of the truth was restored by Soviet troops digging up the remains of Stalin's victims from the Katyn forest, who continued to dig even when the leaders of the August coup ordered them not to. More of the truth was uncovered by Dmitri Yurasov, an intrepid researcher, digging on his own, year after year, through the long-hidden records of Stalin's multitudinous murders to compile a master list of his victims. Still more of the truth was exposed by those irrepressible journalists in their makeshift offices creating, for the first time in Soviet history, a free and independent press. Remnick's portraits of these ordinary citizens, intoxicated by truth, transcend journalism. Whether he shows us Siberian miners defying official lies by refusing to return to their pits until they are given the truth or a self-exiled recluse grilling a salmon to share with his guest on the shores of the Sea of Okhotsk as a Soviet trawler idles nearby, its nets full of rotting fish for want of an order from Moscow to begin processing its catch, Remnick reveals the essence of the Soviet collapse as a force of nature, impelled by the irrepressible human desire to learn the truth.Lenin's Tomb contributes to our understanding of the Soviet collapse as few recent books have done. It will forever define one of the transcendent moments in the history of the human spirit. Read Less