In this book Boris Kagarlitsky offers a trenchant analysis of the break-up of
the Soviet Union and the transformation of a section of the old nomenklatura
into a new possessing and ruling elite.
Kagarlitsky shows that Western commentators have been misled by the street
theatre of events like the bungled coup of August 1991 into supposing that a
fundamental break has been made with the confused politics and economics of the
late Soviet period. He analyses the ill-considered and self-interested attempts
made by the nomenklatura to privatize assets and inaugurate a free-market
economy, finding an essential continuity between the plans of Gorbachev's and
Yeltsin's advisers. He reveals,