A Democracy Of Despots

This book describes the creation of the legislature and its role in the momentous upheaval which brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union. It examines the role of parliamentary institutions in the bitter struggles which have marked the first years of the independent Russian Federation.



In A Democracy of Despots correspondent Donald Murray provides an eyewitness account of the struggle for power in the USSR under Mikhail Gorbachev and in Russia under Boris Yeltsin, showing how both men used and abused the democratic institutions they helped make possible. The story he tells of the emerging democratic government is one of ambitious