I originally was interested in this book as a possible account of what happened in Russia over the past 20/30 years to lead us to Putin. You can get this out of the book but you have to do a lot of gleaning through Gorbachev's self-defence and accounts of his opinions and statements at various points in the narrative. You do get a sense of the mechanisms of political and economic corruption that developed under Yeltsin, and how so much of the State wealth was grabbed by the first generation of Oligarchs. It is more difficult to get a sense of how Putin's game unfolded. It seems Putin said all the right things with regard to ending the chaos and respecting democracy, while at the same time pursuing an ever more authoritarian governing style and building a new set of cronies. Fairly prosaic. Gorbachev does create, however, a good picture of the chaos and dire circumstances that created what could be called a necessity for Putin and his approach.
Still looking for a really good book on this topic.
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