Gorbachev and Yeltsin as Leaders

Gorbachev and Yeltsin as Leaders examines the strategies employed by Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin to build leadership authority. Political leaders often use a combination of coercion, material reward, and persuasion, but Professor Breslauer focuses on the power of ideas, as leaders use them to mobilize support and to craft an image as effective problem solvers, indispensable consensus builders, and symbols of national unity. In Khrushchev and Brezhnev as Leaders: Building Authority in Soviet Politics (1982), he documented Khrushchev’s and Brezhnev’s domestic policy strategies; this book handles domestic and foreign policies. All chapters compare Gorbachev and Yeltsin and Khrushchev and Brezhnev, mostly analyzing the changes in policy, the strategies, and the political dilemmas that are common to all four administrations. The book discusses the ways in which authority building was affected by political constraints unique to each of the stages.