Kagarlitsky's analysis ... is the most acute and substantial so far available ... Among the utterly absorbing acts of witness now reaching us from the Soviet Union, this chronicle, with its proudly Pascalian title, occupies an eminent place. -- George Steiner * The Sunday Times *
An excellent cram course in Soviet intellectual history for the non-specialist civilian. * The Voice Literary Supplement *
This extraordinarily impressive book, full of surprising insights, shows the intensity of unofficial life behind officaldom. -- Anthony Barnett * Observer *
The book succeeds on the strength of the author's conclusive demonstration of the vitality and variety of left democratic thought in the Soviet Union and by his elaborate mastery of the sources. The best of its kind. * Library Journal *
Ambitious, earnest, impassioned. * Washington Post *

Boris Kagarlitsky is the author of The Thinking Reed, The Dialectic of Hope, and The Mirage of Modernisation. He has been arrested twice for his activism, once in 1982 under Brezhnev, and in 1993 under Yeltsin.