Tony Parker spent five months in Moscow in 1990, interviewing wherever he went - and everywhere finding people ready and eager to talk and to exercise their new freedom to speak without fear. From their words he builds a surprising and entertaining kaleidoscope of the Soviet Union today - a picture which includes the manager of huge internationally famous GUM Department Store, a stagehand at the Bolshoi Theatre and the director of the USSR's first McDonald's hamburger bar. He spoke to a World War II tank commander, an army veteran recently returned from Afghanistan, to hippies and pacifists, as well as meeting a chess Grandmaster, a beauty queen, a private detective, and drinking tea for two hours in the Lubianka with officers of the KGB. Scientists, academicians, doctors, old people, schoolchildren, workers - all respond to Tony Parker's skill in loosening tongues and encouraging individuals to speak for themselves.