I did not know what to expect with this book. It was dealing with a good amount of history 20 -40 years old, what more and new could be said. I also have found that with many books that probably needed some help in the translation you get a more dry writing style. I was please when both of my assumptions turned out not to be correct. The writer provides some interesting information and his writing style is not wooden. As in any biography you have the expected chapter on the childhood years of the character so nothing new here and for me it could have been left out. There were some interesting facts about growing up in the USSR, but nothing worth 20 some odd pages. The real value to me came from the descriptions of some of the work the author's father performed as the second in command of what came to be known as the KGB.

If you have covered some of the history of he KGB, there are some interesting points in this book that could fill in or contradicted information from other books. You have a life of what most would call dirty double-crossing others in the top of the government, KGB and military. On of the interesting view points was from one of the guys doing the work on the military purges that took place with Stalin. It was rather amazing that the authors father did not also fall to the ax, but that must be a testament to the secure position he had behind Berga (SP?). This is an interesting book, but probably only for people that have a strong interest, this in not as exciting as the dusk jacket tries to make it out and if you do not have at least a general knowledge of the organization and history involved then you will miss a lot of the value of the book.

Kaganovich was an utterly evil man without redeeming characterists. He was responsible for far more deaths than Hitler.

He was selfish, cared only about his career. He purged the Ukraine, the railroads, heavy industry - sent millions to their death.

This book is about the shape of intellectual perceptions in an era which was much more unsettled than the present, with preparation for a major war dominating the form of politics that were commonly perceived as getting along by going along. The index, pp. 215-228, covers a range of topics, and is good on the correspondence and works of Burckhardt, Mill, and Tocqueville, the major writers on the political situation of their era that form the basis for this book. The notes, pp. 167-206, are as expected for a book which began as a doctoral dissertation at the University of Chicago. Note 5 on Chapter one admits, "Burckhardt left hundreds of pages of lecture notes on the Revolution, but his own opinions are so enmeshed in unattributed quotations and paraphrases that determining from the notes which thoughts are his has proved impossible." (p. 169). Reading the text of ARISTOCRATIC LIBERALISM with an eye on the notes in the back soon leads to sources that are from multiple authors. Note 33 is pretty clear that it is setting up a context. `For a few of many references, see Burckhardt . . . See also Mill, "De Tocqueville on Democracy in America" [II] (1840), CW, 18:167; Tocqueville, L'ANCIEN REGIME, OC, 2, pt. 1:47, 53;' etc. (p. 170). Note 34 cites both Tocqueville and Burckhardt in support of the statement, "The result was its destruction and the encouragement of a passion for unity and uniformity, for the elimination of special privileges and of independent groupings within society." (p. 16).

This book was published in 1992, long before 9/11/2001 became the dominant symbol of destruction that is such a contrast to the situation faced by Tocqueville, Mill, and Burckhardt due to "the social and cultural leveling carried out by the Old Regime gradually weakened and even destroyed all the bonds that had formerly connected individuals in a society of orders." (p. 16, citing note 33). This situation was taken seriously, but associated with "Individualism, in this negative sense, was intimately connected with political centralization. The destruction of political liberty--that is, of a political system based on local self-government--was the worst result of the Old Regime in Tocqueville's eyes." (p. 17). Calling a belief in any established order ARISTOCRATIC LIBERALISM, as this book does over and over, is almost quaint. Consider the choices faced by intellectuals of that time. "Too many of the ideas of the Revolution and the Enlightenment could easily lead to despotism, whether by a party or by a military dictatorship, for the aristocratic liberals to be comfortable." (p. 33). Perhaps we who regularly demonstrate and vote against such dictatorial tendencies have escaped the need to confront such fears, now that society is organized mainly for work and pleasure, so that now, the only form of order more important than entertainment values is the form of corporate hierarchy which people expect to submit to on the job.

Chapter 2 of ARISTOCRATIC LIBERALISM, with its emphasis on the hegemony of the middle class, the commercial spirit, stagnation, and mediocrity, comes close to a description of the current situation, though it doesn't consider how popular the link of home entertainment could make such modern adaptations as movies and sports, typically ersatz activities which create the illusion that localities have some grasp on the attention of the people living in a particular area. On a national level, it is easier to believe that those carrying out policy are not quite following orders as much as they are following Donald Rumsfeld, an old man who could be replaced any minute, like the Secretary of the Army, who didn't have to give up his job because of anything he did at Enron. He just submitted his resignation anyway, quite recently, when he found out who didn't want to see him around anymore. If anything, we have advanced from aristocracy to a *throw the bums out* mentality that is likely to be applied with little or no link to reality, whenever the majority finds itself hurting. Chapter 3, "Despotisms: The State and Its Masters," tries to consider the dangers of Public Opinion, Suffrage, the Prussian Constitution, Socialism and the Fear of Socialism.

Chapter 4 is on "Modern Humanism: The Values of Aristocratic Liberalism." A theme of much of the book is that no one took the side of the aristocrats for their sake; they were merely valued because they were not perceived as being pawns. "On the grand scale, diversity within a culture played a parallel role to the diverse character of human nature and particular individuals. A specialized society which allowed expression to only one aspect of humanity was repugnant for the same reason a purely one-sided specialized individual was: it was not fully human." (p. 104). "Burckhardt's Renaissance man was no example of calm balance and symmetry, in classical fashion, but of powerful, even demonic diversity of talent. As such, the Renaissance was in this way too the beginning of modernity for Burckhardt." (p. 105).

Chapters 5 and 6 still cling to the time frame of 1830-1870, in which "the priority many liberals put on preserving private property did not make them conservatives or reactionaries, at least not by choice, although when sufficiently frightened by the specter of socialism they tended to run for the authoritarian government, as Tocqueville lamented." (p. 141). Liberals in 2003 are still frightened enough of being called liberals to have much to say when confronted with long-term trends that could wipe out the prosperity which they claimed as a result of their policies in the 20th century. Liberals must be used to reading insults by now, but I'm not sure it will do them any good to read more of the type this book contains. "One element of an exclusion principle is contained, as I have noted, in the statement that liberals are not democrats, and that anyone who believes in immediate universal suffrage is not a liberal." (p. 140).