Zhao Ziyang

This should prove remarkably interesting; a Zhao Ziyang recorded memoir of his CCP tenure during the 1980s has been smuggled out of China and is being published:

But in this long, enforced retirement, it turns out, Mr. Zhao secretly recorded his own account, on 30 musical cassette tapes that were spirited out of the country by former aides and supporters, of his rise to national power in the 1980s, his battles with the old guard, and his alliance and tussles with Mr. Deng as he loosened Soviet-style controls and helped put China on a path to the dynamic economic power it has become today.

Mr. Zhao also tells how he was outmaneuvered during the lengthy student-led pro-democracy demonstrations in the spring of 1989, setting up his ouster shortly before the military crackdown on June 4 of that year.

We can expect that the account will be self-serving, and that Zhao will paint himself as critical to the process of economic reform and as a lonely voice against violence in 1989. Both of those are to some extent true, but I doubt that Zhao will tell the whole story. Still, any account of the inner workings of the CCP during the 1980s will shed light on the leadership debates and processes that shaped the modern PRC.