Party Worker : The Rise of a Soviet Regional Leader

This book is about the late Soviet Union, focusing on the crisis in the ruling structures of the Communist Party, caused by the lack of generational rejuvenation. Author analyzes the case of Volgograd as a typical manifestation of this crisis and explains why Perestroika did not work.

Sociologist Mikhail Anipkin presents a case-study of the political career of a high-ranking regional party leader, Alexander Anipkin, the author’s father. The book explores political turbulence in the late Soviet Union with the focus on Perestroika (reconstruction), 1985-1991. The author views those momentous processes through the political activity of the book’s key figure, who enthusiastically supported Perestroika and promoted and defended reforms in the Communist Party despite impediments by his fellow functionaries. At the core are the revolutionary events that took place in Volgograd, in the south of European Russia, in the winter of 1990. These resulted in the overthrow of the whole leadership of the Volgograd Region. The author argues that the interests of the younger generation of party functionaries came together with the popular movement in the USSR in 1989-1991 and created a unique situation, which unintentionally resulted in the collapse of the Soviet Union. The book also contains a personal dimension and reveals many interesting details of the life of the high-ranking Soviet Party nomenklatura.