Michael Dobbs: Down with Big Brother

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“Combines the astonished gaze of an eyewitness with the deeper knowledge of a historian, providing a vivid, insightful account of what happened.”

“[Dobbs] weaves this complex story together with the kind of fascinating details and snippets of conversation that constantly offer new insights into seemingly familiar events.”

“No one knows this story better…. Combining the energy of a master reporter and the care of a real historian, Dobbs focuses on the crucial moments of imperial collapse. He seems to have been on every scene and in every archive.”

“Dobbs has written a straight-ahead narrative that makes good use of the documents coming out of newly opened East bloc archives.”

“Michael Dobbs seems to have been everywhere at once…. His superior skills as a reporter and storyteller alone would be enough to make a gripping account. But he goes deeper, sifting through former officials’ memoirs and long-sealed archives to produce a significant history, rich in the political and human drama of one of the twentieth century’s landmark events.”

Michael Dobbs was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He has spent much of his journalistic career reporting from Communist countries: from 1977 to 1980 as a special correspondent based in Yugoslavia for the Washington Post , the London Guardian , and the BBC; and from 1981 to 1995 as the Washington Post ’s bureau chief in Warsaw and Moscow (with an intervening stint in Paris). He is currently a diplomatic reporter for the Post .

In addition to having received the Overseas Press Club award for interpretation of foreign news in 1990 and a National Press Club award for best diplomatic reporting in 1995, Dobbs has held fellowships at the Russian Research Center at Harvard University and at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with his wife and three children.

FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, JANUARY 1998

Copyright © 1996 by Michael Dobbs

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, in 1997.

The Library of Congress has catalogued the Knopf edition as follows:

Dobbs, Michael.

Down with Big Brother: the fall of the Soviet empire / by Michael Dobbs.

— 1st ed.

p. cm.

1. Soviet Union—Politics and government—1953–1985. 2. Soviet Union—Politics and government—1985–1991. I. Title.

DK274.D63 1997

947.084—dc20 96-21607

eISBN: 978-0-307-77316-6

Random House Web address: http://www.randomhouse.com/

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