Includes index.

Includes index.

Roots. 27 November 1978 ; Stavropol, Moscow, Stavropol ; Moscow State University ; An initial test of strength ; Launching my Party career ; The challenge of power ; At Staraya Ploshchad ; On the eve -- In the Kremlin. General Secretary ; More light ; The first attempt at economic reform ; The decisive step ; Work and reflection ; Political reform : power is transferred from Staraya Ploshchad to the Kremlin ; Nationalities policy : a difficult search ; The Party and Perestroika ; How to enter the market -- The changing Soviet Union and the world. New thinking in foreign policy ; Europe : our common home ; Towards a new world order ; Perestroika and the socialist countries ; Moscow and Beijing : "Close the past, open the future" ; Overcoming divisions in Europe ; German unification ; Understanding leads to partnership ; The Middle East knot : trial by aggression -- 1991 : the stormy year. Threats and hopes ; Economic recognition for a changing Soviet Union : the Group of Seven in 1991 ; Bush in Moscow three weeks before the coup ; The coup ; The last efforts and the Belovezh conspiracy ; The Soviet Union and the world after the coup.

In these long-awaited memoirs, Mikhail Gorbachev looks back on a lifetime that mirrors the fate of the Russian people. From the persecution of his family under Stalin to his first political steps, to his extraordinary rise within the Communist Party, Gorbachev recounts the events that led to his own disillusionment, without which the eventual implosion of communism would not have taken place. He casts an equally sharp eye on the policies of both past communist governments and present-day reformers.