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London to the sea, but the impression this precipitous style leaves is that of indis- criminate all-inclusiveness. Equally eclectic in method, Thames shares with its predecessors hoth the merits and some of the weaknesses. One of the most serious problems that Mr Ackroyd's text opens up concerns the satisfaction that he denies his readership. In its many-sided and wide-ranging stakes, Thames reads not exacting enough as a historical account and certainly wanting in literariness as a fictional piece. For a book evocative in its title of one of the profoundest literary journeys into the unconscious - Coleridge's Kubla Khan - Thames is scarce in mystery and literary reference, despite his meticulous effort at cataloguing scenes of life and death symbolism and his painstaking decomposing of the mythical layers in the genealogy of the River. Insofar as it lacks the verve, playfulness, linguistic ventriloquism and mag- netism of his earlier prose, Mr Ackroyd's work may be viewed as a betrayal of the scintillating character and narrative skill that his journalistic and fictional output once probed. Perhaps one of the features that Ackroyd fans find it hardest to come to terms with is the lack of humour that seems to characterise his non-fiction work. Still, in the capacity for animating the subject and capturing the spirit of the 'global river' one discovers reassuring traits reminiscent of the resourceful biographer and his rare ability to identify with his subjects. From early on Ackroyd scholars noted the coexistence ofthe metaphysical and the metafictional, the modernist and the postmodernist dimensions. Whereas there is a lot in the metafictional here worth developing, for those in search of the arche- typal and the metaphysical River, rather than the historical and the factual, Thames makes for a highly engaging reading, not least of all owing to the pictorial elo- quence of the edition, the exquisite graphics and illustrations. Fittingly, it has become a 'blazon' of what has over the years grown into the Peter Ackroyd literary establishment that when finishing an Ackroyd book, one is contaminated by an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, an attribute that recommends this latest piece most convincingly as irrefutable proof of at least one mission accomplished.

ADRIANA-CECILIA NEAGU

Adriana-Cecilia Neagu is Associate Professor in the Department of Applied Modern Languages, Faculty of Letters, Babes-Bolyai University, CluJ-Napoca, Romania.

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV AND PERESTROIKA Years that Changed the World: Perestroika in Perspective. Archie Brown. Oxford University Press. £25.00. xx + 350 pages. ISBN 978-0-19-928215-9. The Perestroika era in the effectively ended and the existence of the country known as the USSR. When the red flag with 378 GONTEMPORARY REVIEW hammer and sickle was lowered on 31 December 1991, the was finally over. One could say that Gorbachev stood at the cradle of a new, uncertain world. Cheered and honoured by many outside the former USSR, he is not a national hero such as Lenin, or even Stalin, who were seen as the most outstanding poli- ticians leading the country in the twentieth century in a poll held in 2000. 'Gorbachev's place in history will depend on where it is written, when it is written, and who writes it' according to the author, an Emeritus Professor of Politics at Oxford University. 'The extent to which he is regarded a success or a failure will long remain a matter of controversy. There seems no doubt, though, that both in and outside he will be regarded as a figure of decisive importance, regardless of whether his activities are viewed positively or highly negatively'. Professor Brown closely follows Gorbachev's career in the Party, culminat- ing in his 'election' as General Secretary of the CPSU in 1985 and his downfall after the August 1991 coup. The reader is presented with a thoroughly researched undertaking divided into three parts. After an elaborate introduction in Part I, explaining the meaning of perestroika and the unreformed Soviet society as it existed before Gorbachev came to power, Professor Brown moves on to Part II in which he includes articles written in 'real time', the period between 1985 and 1989 when perestroika was actually taking place. Part III, as is Part I, is writ- ten with hindsight, making use of the newest sources and hitherto unused archival material conceming the development of perestroika and its creator. His book provides the reader with an excellent overview of the eventful years of Gorbachev's rule. The book is certainly to be applauded for its in-depth analysis of perestroika, its influence on ending the Cold War and of , the politician. Professor Brown describes the latter's exceptional capabilities, talents and achievements, without ignoring the obvious tactical mistakes he made (like appointing the wrong persons to senior positions and the fateful failure to split the Communist Party into a social democratic party and a remainder party of die-hard communists). The author comes to the conclu- sion that Gorbachev's successes 'overwhelmingly dwarf the failures, though such a judgement clearly depends ... on the values of the observer'. In this case, the observer has done a tremendous job in convincing the reader that Gorbachev laid the foundations for a democratic state, albeit one in which under Putin and his successor, Medvedev, democracy still has a long way to go. The only rather awkward point to this reviewer concems Gorbachev's attitude to Lenin. Professor Brown observes that Gorbachev's esteem for Lenin over the years stayed in place, although not for Leninism itself He explains this by noting the apparent political contradiction between the rejection of essential principles and practice of Leninism and the fact that referring to Lenin remained the source of legitimacy for changes of policy within the Communist Party. He also notes that this attitude had a significant psychological component. Gorbachev identified his own view with that of Lenin in his latter years, making concessions to private property and market reform in his New Economic REVIEWS 379

Policy of the 1920s. One finds it rather naïve that a General Secretary of the Communist Party, with, one would imagine, full access to all the secret archives, still invoked the name of a man whose writings provided the basis for Stalin's ruthless dictatorship. The Russian historian. General Dmitri Volkogonov, in his biography of Lenin published in 1994 made it abundantly clear where Lenin stood: 'Even if he wanted to change things, which is doubtful, he took his intentions with him to the grave ... But if one looks closely at his understanding of ... [the NEP], one can clearly discern old Bolshevik features. NEP, as far as Lenin was con- cerned, was bridled capitalism, and it could be "lapped down" at any time'. Gorbachev could and should have known the real Lenin. As Volkogonov wrote: 'Lenin never concealed his belief that the new world could only be built with the aid of physical violence. In March 1922 he wrote to Kamenev: "It is the biggest mistake to think that NEP will put an end to the terror. We shall return to the terror, and to economic terror"... I do not doubt that Lenin wanted earthly happiness for the people, at least for those he called "the proletariat". But he regarded it as normal to build this "happiness" on blood, coercion and the denial of freedom'. Nevertheless, Professor Brown has done what he promised to do: provid- ing the reader with 'an interpretation of perestroika, understood as a radical reform or "revolution from above"... initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev and a handful of allies in the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the mid-1980s'. Without any doubt, this book is a masterly study of how perestroika led to the dismantling of Communist society and, in the end, the unintended fall of the Soviet Union.

PETER HYLARIDES

A GROUND-BREAKING STUDY OF SHAKESPEARE Shakespeare in Parts. Simon Palfrey and Tiffany Stem. Oxford University Press. £50.00. xiv -f 545 pages. ISBN 978-0-19-927205-1. Role comes from roll. In Shakespeare's day, actors were given their parts on long strips of written paper, which were continuous and wound round a baton. Each speech was preceded by a cue, of one to three words. That was all the actor knew. The full play-text was a closely guarded industrial secret. Not till the first rehearsal - and there might not be a second - could the actor know the gist of the play. The implications of this practice are tremendous, extensively explored in Shakespeare in Parts. Modern actors will be issued with the full play- text and are expected to have taken it aboard. Group rehearsals and ensemble will