Drawing on interviews with leading figures such as Gorbachev and senior members of the Yeltsin team, this book examines the extraordinary changes that have occurred in Russia since 1987. It also describes how ordinary people took events into their own hands, and how Russians reacted to the loss of their empire. The author has won three major awards for his reporting on Russia, and received the London Press Club's Scoop of the Year Award for getting to Gorbachev's prison villa in the Crimea and interviewing him during the coup.