Down with Big Brother: The Fall of the Soviet Empire

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My agent, Rafe Sagalyn, and my editor at Knopf, Ashbel Green, played key roles in encouraging me to write this book and shepherding it to completion. Other people who made helpful comments on the manuscript were Jeff Frank, now with The New Yorker, my former Moscow colleague Fred Hiatt, and David Brown, a medical reporter for the Post. Responsibility for any remaining errors rests with me. I would also like to thank Don Oberdorfer, a former diplomatic reporter for the Post and author of The Turn, for making available the transcripts of two Princeton University conferences on the end of the Cold War. These proved very helpful.

The collapse of communism was one of the great news stories of the twentieth century. I will always be grateful to the editors of the Washington Post, particularly Jim Hoagland and Michael Getler, for assigning me to cover many of its most dramatic episodes, beginning with the Polish labor unrest of August 1980. My understanding of the story was greatly enriched by talks with present and former Post reporters, including Bradley Graham, Jackson Diehl, Robert Kaiser, Dusko Doder, Celestine Bohlen, Gary Lee, Fred Hiatt, Margaret Shapiro, David Hoffman, Lee Hockstader, Dan Southerland, Blaine Harden, Mary Battiata, John Pomfret, Christine Spolar, and especially David Remnick. Nobody could wish for better colleagues.

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