In 1985 the Soviet Union was a recognized superpower and its political system, whilst looking clumsy to the outside world, also looked tenacious. Less than seven years later the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was banned, the notorious KGB broken up and the Soviet Union itself dissolved into 15 independent states. This book explores the final years of the Soviet system and Gorbachev's career as party leader and president (up to December 1991) and assesses the place of perestroika in Russian history. The book also analyzes features of Gorbachev that puzzled the West, in particular his relationships to communism, revolution, democracy and gradualism, to the Soviet middle classes and intelligentsia, to the Communist Party, and to the national diversity of the former Soviet empire.