In the documentary thriller “The Dead Hand,” dedicated to the history of the Cold War of the 1970s and 80s, American journalist David Hoffman gives the reader the opportunity to look at both sides of the Iron Curtain and feel the atmosphere of paranoia that reigned there. Based on unique archival documents and eyewitness accounts, the author talks about the “unknown soldiers” of that war and explains why, despite the collapse of the USSR, there were neither winners nor losers. This is the story of how a once-mighty empire turned into a kind of supermarket that sells enriched uranium and strains of deadly bacteria and never stops buying from terrorists and authoritarian regimes. David Hoffman was a special correspondent for the Washington Post in the White House during the Reagan era. and head of the Moscow bureau of this publication in 1995–2001. He is one of the most respected American journalists writing about foreign policy, the author of the book “Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia.” Translation from English by Anton Shirikov.