Dmitri Volkogonov

After research in secret Soviet archives (both before and after the dissolution of the union), he published a biography of Joseph Stalin and Vladimir Lenin, among others such as Leon Trotsky.

Volkogonov published books that contributed to the strain of liberal Russian thought that emerged during Glasnost in the late 1980s and the post-Soviet era of the early 1990s.

The family was "exiled to Krasnoyarsk in Western Siberia: Volkogonov joked that as they were already in the Far East, and Stalin was not in the habit of sending his political prisoners to Hawaii, they had to be sent west.

"[5] "But even as he was indoctrinating troops in Communist orthodoxy, General Volkogonov was struggling with private doubts based on the horrors he discovered hidden in the archives".

While reading in the archives during the Brezhnev years, Volkogonov "found documents that astounded him — papers that revealed top Communists as cruel, dishonest and inept".

[5] Volkogonov had shown the other senior officers at the Institute a draft of the first volume of a 10-volume official Soviet history of World War II.

"[9] "Accused of blackening the name of the army, as well as that of the Communist Party and the Soviet state, and personally attacked by Minister of Defense Yazov," and under pressure from Gorbachev, Volkogonov resigned.

Deep in the basement of the huge grey building were shelves holding metal boxes that contained all the written records associated with Lenin.

[16] Volkogonov explained, "As I saw more and more closed Soviet archives, as well as the large Western collections at Harvard University and the Hoover Institution in California, Lenin's profile altered in my estimation".

[19][20] Conversely, other writers such as Daniel Singer have claimed bias in his historical interpretation to “proclaim that Marxism is evil and revolution is wrong”, superficial assessment of the ideological formulations and compared his book unfavourably to the Deutscher trilogy.

Shukman explained: "He did not strut or swagger, or drink or smoke, and in the many different situations in which I was to see him — in other countries, in Russia, with academics, etc., he was invariably easy-going and relaxed, and plainly popular.

Perhaps the only thing I achieved in this life was to break with the faith I had held for so long...Disillusionment first came to me as an idea, rather like the melancholy of a spiritual hangover.

Finally, as the determination to confront the truth and understand it...[11]By the end of his life, Volkogonov had "firmly committed himself to the view that Russia's only hope in 1917 lay in the liberal and social democratic coalition that emerged in the February Revolution.

For instance he related that when he would enter the Russian Parliament (where he had held a seat as a liberal since the Gorbachev era), he would be met by Communist legislators who would "line up at the door and shout insults."

"[7] "Despite his undergoing extensive surgery for colon and liver cancer"[7] in 1991, the pace of both his political activity and the publication of his writings increased sharply.

Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov, who had fired Volkogonov from the Institute three months earlier, had told him, "something will happen to get rid of the likes of you."

From his hospital bed Volkogonov broadcast an appeal on the BBC to the Soviet army to not obey the orders of the coup leaders.

He also finished just before his death Autopsy for an Empire: the Seven Leaders Who Built the Soviet Regime (Russian title: Sem Vozhdei).

The book presents chapters on "the seven leaders of the Soviet Union: Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko and Gorbachev.

[11] The English editions were essentially condensed versions of the much longer Russian originals, as acknowledged by their translator and editor Harold Shukman.