The Fall of the Soviet Union
Mikhail Gorbachev is supposed to be the star of this drama, but he is continuously overtaken by events and upstaged by a cast of colorful characters: President Reagan and the Evil Empire, Margaret Thatcher and “Star Wars,” the Communist Party and Chernobyl, Osama bin Laden and the Soviet War in Afghanistan, the Old Guard and its failed military coup, Boris Yeltsin and the Radical Reformers, the Nationalist rebels and Chechen terrorists, the Russian Mafia and the billionaire Oligarchs – not to mention Putin and the ever-popular KGB.