This historiographical and political book is author's fourth publication on the topic of modern Russian history and the fall of the Soviet Empire. He is a confidential expert on Russian and Soviet Russian environment, facts, connections, people and circumstances and he gives us an overall knowledgeable picture of the key events in this book. As a consequence of these events, a historically unique Russian inclination to liberal democracy was stopped and took a form of a pseudo-autocracy led by a new eternal ruler, generated in the almighty environment of Russia’s secret services.

In this book, Satter connects his personal experiences with a compilation of publicly available sources. Thanks to that, he succeeds to capture the profound changes in the Russian society step by step: privatisation, bombings of houses in Moscow, Volgodonsk and Buynaksk, two Chechen wars, terrorist attacks on Dubrovka Theatre or on a Beslan school. Under the surface of formal unity and nationalistic enthusiasm in contemporary Russia, he uncovers a not-so-pleasant picture of its social and economic decay. A single person has no value, especially if not from an oligarchical and criminal environment, which calls itself “State” in Russia.