WHO LOST RUSSIA?

(Oneworld £10.99) ‘THE founding of the Soviet Union was proclaimed from the stage of the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow on December 30, 1922. Its death warrant was signed almost seven decades later in a forest in Belarus.’

Peter Conradi was a foreign correspondent in Soviet Moscow for six years. In his authoritative and readable book, he explores how the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 appeared to offer a tantalising opportunity for international co-operation — even world peace — but it was not to be. How the troubled relationship between Russia and the West will now develop remains to be seen, but Conradi gives the final word to the American Cold War diplomat George Kennan, who said only the Russian people themselves could bring about enduring change in their country.