The dramatic changes that have taken place in what used to be the Soviet Union have been at the centre of international attention since they were launched in the mid 1980s. It was certainly a change from the grey uniformity of the later Brezhnev years. The Soviet Union was suddenly under the control of a youthful and imaginative General Secretary with a personable wife by his side. The official ideology came under vigorous assault and a doctrine of ‘socialist pluralism’ was promoted in its place. Competitive elections were held to the first working parliament in Soviet history. The media began to reflect a variety of points of view. The economy was exposed to private and cooperative ownership as part of a wider transition to market relations. An attempt was made to construct a ‘renewed federation’ that would take the place of the overcentralised union of the previous seventy years. And ‘new thinking’ in international affairs led to a series of changes in East–West relations as the Soviet leadership began to construct a cooperative rather than confrontational relationship with the other members of the world community.

The impact of all these changes, by the early 1990s, was still somewhat unclear. Democratisation, for instance, had led to an uneasy combination of party control and democratic accountability, and then, after the end of communist rule and the introduction of a new Russian constitution in 1993, to a strongly presidential republic in which the prime minister – after communist and nationalist successes in the December elections – appeared to be the more powerful figure.