ABSTRACT
In August 1991 Boris Yeltsin, President of the newly self-declared independent Russian Federation, hauled himself atop a Russian armoured vehicle, shook the hand of the slightly bewildered Russian soldier inside and declared, ‘Soldiers, officers, generals: the clouds of terror and dictatorship are gathering over the whole country. They must not be allowed to bring eternal night.’ In doing so he thereby helped to bring to an end one of the greatest social experiments in human history. (See Box 1.1, Attempted Coup d’état in the Soviet Union, 1991, for a description and an explanation of this failed Communist coup d’état.)
