Exactly twenty-five years ago, perestroika began in the USSR. It led to such catastrophic consequences that neither world wars nor revolutions could have caused. The Soviet Union was blown up from within by a small group of influential party and state leaders; History has never known such a crime. The author of this book, Leonid Kravchenko, a legend of domestic journalism, in 1991 the head of the USSR State Television and Radio, was then at the very epicenter of events related to the State Emergency Committee, a witness to endless betrayals of people and ideas. Showing perestroika as an act of high treason, he cites as evidence many little-known facts about the activities of the leaders of the party and state headed by Gorbachev.