Table of Contents

Foreword -- Preface -- Mending the Breach -- Reinforcements from the Second Front -- On a Crumbling Verge -- A President Without a Country -- One Last Mission for the Union -- On the Eve of the Seventy-Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution -- The Mirage of a Confederal State -- “A Free Man with Nothing to Fear” -- “A Cloud in Trousers” -- Fight to the Finish -- Final Hours -- Checking the Pulse -- Last Rites -- Burying a Time Capsule -- Departure -- Afterword: A Mythical Kingdom Vanishes—Again -- Appendix: Resignation Speech of Mikhail Gorbachev