Russia, 1991-2001 - Sean Sheehan

The book opens with a dramatic recount of the attempted coup by hardline communists in August 1991. In the following chapters, it looks at the collapse of the USSR, and the effect on Russian people of radical economic change and the end of centralised Party rule. The Yeltsin regime is assessed: the rise of the oligarchs, wholesale corruption and robber capitalism; and the war in Chechnya. The book concludes with a look at Putin and the future of Russia, still the largest country in the world with over 140 million people and the second biggest nuclear arsenal.