I have always had a keen interest in the history of the Soviet Union. My recent experience teaching politics to first year university students has taught me how is difficult to convey to anyone with little or no memory of the world pre-1990 the shadow cast by the Soviet presence. Now, there happened to have been the odd communist in my family, so I guess that the household I grew up in the shadow was felt in a little more sympathetic way than some. But despite the ready access to numerous books, pamphlets and propaganda pieces, the whole notion of the Soviet Union (or Eastern Europe more generally) was an utter mystery to me. So of course, given my interest in history, the former-USSR still maintains a presence. Yet, unlike much modern history, the history of the Soviet Union has a beginning, middle and an end. Amplifying this, its end does not seem that long ago, even if we are nearing twenty years! To anyone with an eye for history, even its beginning was relatively recent. What...