Book review: Vernacular voices in story of Soviet Union’s implosion

Author weaves lives of die-hard apparatchiks with the dreams of young Russian musicians more inspired by Dylan than Dostoevsky, more moved by Lennon than Lenin

Mikhail Gorbachev, pictured in 1990, is portrayed not as the avuncular uncle the West cheered but as a petty, volatile, and ineffective leader with a haughty wife. File picture: AP/David Longstreath

• The Darkside of the Earth: How the Soviet Union Collapsed but Remained
• Mikhail Zygar
• Weidenfeld & Nicolson