Introduction

Abstract

As is the case with my other work in the field of Russian and European studies, the emergence of this book would have been impossible without a combination of events and people. In this particular case the contribution of events is perhaps more fortuitous. Like many others I was a witness to the dramatic events unleashed by Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms which finally led to the disintegration of the USSR in 1991. I visited Moscow in 1993, just before the dramatic showdown later that year when Boris Yeltsin’s tanks shelled the parliament building.