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Elite-level Soviet politics, privileged access to state secrets, knowledge about machinations inside the Kremlin-such is the environment in which Andrei A. Kovalev lived and worked. In this memoir of his time as a successful diplomat serving in various key capacities and as a member of Mikhail Gorbachev's staff, Kovalev reveals hard truths about his country as only a perceptive witness can do. InRussia's Dead EndKovalev shares his intimate knowledge of political activities behind the scenes at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Kremlin before and after the dissolution of the USSR in December 1991, including the Russia of Vladimir Putin.Kovalev analyzes Soviet efforts to comply with international human-rights obligations, the machinations of the KGB, and the link between corrupt oligarchs and state officials. He documents the fall of the USSR, the post-Soviet explosion of state terrorism and propaganda, and offers a nuanced historical explanation of the roots of Russia's contemporary crisis under Vladimir Putin. This insider's memoir provides a penetrating analysis of late-Soviet and post-Soviet Russian politics that is pungent, pointed, witty, and accessible. It assesses the current dangerous status of Russian politics and society while illuminating the path to a more just and democratic future.

“Order Number One for the complete seizure of power has been fulfilled. A group of fsb officers has successfully infiltrated the government.” These words were pronounced in December 1999 in the headquarters of the KGB-FSB—the contemporary incarnation of the Cheka, the secret police force Lenin established in 1917—by the recently appointed head of state, Vladimir Putin. Apparently from his own experience, he confirmed that there’s no such person as a “former” Chekist—that is, special service operative. The advent to power in Russia of the special services is a unique phenomenon in world history, yet it seems fitting

The core of the enigmatic Russian soul sometimes appears to be located in the Kremlin. Of course, in Russia as elsewhere the real action of politics and diplomacy takes place behind closed doors, and the outcomes of the often painstaking and intensive struggles become known to the wider public as official foreign and domestic policy. The following anecdote from the early Yeltsin era, when there were very specific ways of doing things, affords a look behind those closed doors. It was a time when incompetence, irresponsibility, seeking personal advantages, and drunkenness on the job, especially in the Kremlin, were typical

It is hard to imagine. In the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the capital of what, in the second half of the 1980s, is still the totalitarian Soviet Union, a number of ministry officials are working openly to destroy the totalitarian foundations of the state. This was the same ministry headed during the Cold War by the grim-faced Andrei Gromyko, widely known in the West as “Mister No” from the results of his negotiations and almost automatic rejection of all Western proposals. Yet the story is true. It was the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that initiated and pushed through almost

A strange situation exists in Russia resulting largely from the nature of the Soviet period, the ideological character of the USSR, and the enhanced suggestibility of the Russian people: Beginning in 1917 the ruling authorities regularly and methodically committed improper acts. Concealing these acts required even more unacceptable practices, culminating in human disasters, tragedies, and limits on a wide spectrum of human rights. For the people to accept this as natural, the state had to possess additional means and instruments and to resort to indisputable and continuous lies. In 2000 Putin named this instrumentality the “vertical of power.” The Vertical

There is an unusual entry in my personal file:Released from position on the staff of the President of the USSR due to the staff’s disbandment. This entry appeared in December 1991 as the logical consequence of processes that converged in the August coup d’état and contributed greatly to the disintegration of the USSR. The coup was an authentic breaking point in Russian history. Let us recall its context. Everyone knew that the vast country was falling apart, that the existing government was unable to rule this gigantic territory inhabited by so many different ethnicities with their many national characteristics,

I referred earlier to the torment the Russian people and the elite suffered from their breaking with familiar habits. That same point fully applies to foreign policy. From the moment the USSR ended, many of those engaged in the foreign policy arena in Russia suffered likewise and experienced a total break similar to an inveterate narcotics addict going cold turkey. The Soviet imperial monster disintegrated into fifteen states, but several, to be sure, did not fundamentally change as a result of this collapse, at least not in their outlook. One might think that after the end of the Cold War

Between 1986 and 1993, from the launch of Mikhail Gorbachev’s democratic reformation through the initial period of Boris Yeltsin’s tenure as the first president of post-Soviet Russia, Russia found itself at a fork in the road. One choice was the well-worn totalitarian and imperial path; the other was that of transforming Russia into a normal country, a home for people wanting to live normal lives. Unfortunately, Russia’s choice of one of the worst possible paths forward was partly conditioned by history and partly foisted upon it by the new Russian elite. Why did perestroika—Gorbachev’s democratic reformation—fail? Why did

Elite-level Soviet politics, privileged access to state secrets, knowledge about machinations inside the Kremlin—such is the environment in which Andrei A. Kovalev lived and worked. In this memoir of his time as a successful diplomat serving in various key capacities and as a member of Mikhail Gorbachev’s staff, Kovalev reveals hard truths about his country as only a perceptive witness can do. In  Russia’s Dead End Kovalev shares his intimate knowledge of political activities behind the scenes at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Kremlin before and after the dissolution of the USSR in December 1991, including the Russia of Vladimir Putin. Kovalev analyzes Soviet efforts to comply with international human-rights obligations, the machinations of the KGB, and the link between corrupt oligarchs and state officials. He documents the fall of the USSR, the post-Soviet explosion of state terrorism and propaganda, and offers a nuanced historical explanation of the roots of Russia’s contemporary crisis under Vladimir Putin. This insider’s memoir provides a penetrating analysis of late-Soviet and post-Soviet Russian politics that is pungent, pointed, witty, and accessible. It assesses the current dangerous status of Russian politics and society while illuminating the path to a more just and democratic future.