Deng Xiaoping: A Revolutionary Life

Those who write biographies of Chinese leaders in the Communist era must face the inevitable reality that, no matter how well-researched, their books will only be relevant as long as archives and primary sources in China pertaining to individuals remain inaccessible.

US-based academics Alexander Pantsov and Steven Levine have attempted to circumvent this somewhat dispiriting fact in their new biography of Deng Xiaoping by drawing on previously embargoed materials from the Soviet archives: in particular, personal dossiers on Deng from the Russian state archive of social and political history in Moscow, as well as those documentary sources in China, which are open. The result is a work that somewhat stridently declares its status as "the only complete and objective biography" of Deng Xiaoping.