The story of Medvedev s own hospitalization and the efforts of his twin brother to secure his release are sensitively chronicled in this dramatic hour-by-hour account of the nineteen days that began with an ominous knock on the door, and ended or did it? with Zhores s conditional release. The format[...]

In March 1985, without the usual long delay and speculation, Mikhail Gorbachev, at fifty-four years of age, became the youngest Soviet leader since Stalin. Gorbachev belongs to a new generation of Communist leaders, a generation that did not experience the suffering and fear that Gorbachev s predece[...]