If you’re not that interested in the intricacies of Soviet law but just want to know what it was like, this is what it was like. He captures the optimism of 1991, the end of the Soviet Union and Boris stepping forward as the liberator from the evil empire – but that’s where the book ends. And yet we know what happened next... But, ultimately, you can’t get away from law – as Remnick reminds us in his final sentence: “In 1991, the Constitutional Court of Russia then ruled that the national Communist party was illegal. The Soviet era ended in a court of law.”
