The Dark Side of the Earth

A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 'Tells the story with a mordant eye, weaving together the disintegration of Mikhail Gorbachev's reformist ambitions, the implosion of the Soviet economy and the plight of ordinary people'
DOMINIC SANDBROOK 'Savage, comic and tragic . . . Brilliant' JOHN CRACE
Who won the Cold War? All my life I thought I knew the answer . . . In 1961, the Soviet Union put the first man into space. By 1991, it had disappeared. How could just a single generation separate the apex of a civilisation from its collapse? And what remained stirring in its ruins? Through the lives of that last generation, renowned Kremlin critic Mikhail Zygar reveals the truth about how everything came crashing down. A tale of epic hubris, told with jaw-dropping candour via the memories of its protagonists and victims, this is a masterpiece of narrative history, essential for understanding modern Russia. 'This is history as it should be: written like a novel and brimming with moral urgency. Extraordinary'
IAN DUNT 'Pointed, novel, and profoundly relevant' FOREIGN POLICY 'One of the most thoughtful Russian writers of our time . . . You may think you know how it all ends, but still, you simply can't put it down'
YULIA NAVALNAYA

Mikhail Zygar is a journalist and the founding editor-in-chief of TV Rain, which was Russia's last independent news channel. His books include War and Punishment (2023), a defence of Ukrainian sovereighty, and All the Kremlin's Men (2017), a critical portrait of Putin's inner circle that was a number-one bestseller in Russia for several months. In 2024, a Moscow court convicted him for his critical reporting and sentenced him to eight and a half years in prison. He now lives in exile.