August 1, 1994
Although news stories report that this ``Kitty Kelley-ish'' peekaboo sold 2.5 million copies in Russia, American readers are apt to find Vasilieva's expose of the lives of Kremlin wives (and their husbands) boring. And whatever scandals she includes smack of irresponsible journalism, for Vasilieva, a member of the nomenklatura who had access to official files, supplies no documentation for her most awesome contentions. For example, she speculatively attributes the 1932 suicide of Stalin's wife Nadezhda to her discovery that her husband was her father. There's a great deal about the lasciviousness of Beria, Stalin's hatchetman, none of it new. The majority of the Kremlin women Vasilieva focuses on, in any case, aren't of great moment to American readers. And Tatyana Andropov and Raisa Gorbachev are given so little attention one wonders at Vasilieva's rare restraint. Photos.
February 15, 1994
A best seller in Russia, this book plunders the KGB archives to create a portrait of the wives who lived behind the walls of the Kremlin.
October 1, 1994
The Soviet Union has a long history of political secrets. Even with glasnost and perestroika, most information was discarded, shredded, or buried along with the deceased leaders and informants. However, recently opened KGB files have exposed interviews, letters, memoirs, and correspondences of the wives and mistresses of Soviet leaders. From Nadezhda Krupskaya to Paulina Zhemchuzhina to Raisa Gorbachev, these women, privy to top secret information, reveal thoughts, behaviors, and, their impetus for many fearless actions in the Communist bloc. Murder, religious discrimination, deception, and widespread philandering by their husbands were not uncommon to these women. Kremlin wives lived more like prisoners than the princesses they were depicted to be. True tales and compelling confessions as such are retold by the author from the wives' perspective. Similar to spying in open diaries, sneaking through the Kremlin, and opening vaults of sealed files, this book is intriguing and historically poignant. ((Reviewed October 1, 1994))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1994, American Library Association.)
July 1, 1994
The history of the Soviet period has been written largely in terms of men in leadership positions, with women's roles remaining poorly covered. Vasilieva, a journalist and daughter of a privileged military family, attempts to fill a real void, but she has provided more speculation than substance. Her research is based on extensive interviews with the subjects or their surviving relatives, archival records, and KGB files on those women who were tried during the Great Purge. Some of the subjects, such as Krupskaya (Lenin's wife), Nina Khrushchev, and Raisa Gorbachev, are already well known. Vasilieva attempts to titillate her readers, but the portraits she crafts are cardboard. Popular collections may have some demand, but others should wait for a better work on the topic. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/15/94.]-Marcia L. Sprules, Council on Foreign Relations Lib., New York