In August 1991, a putsch occurred. This event shocked the country and, apparently, the whole world. On August 19 we were in one country, and on August 21 we found ourselves in a completely different one. Three days became the watershed between the past and the future. Events forced me to take a voice recorder, sit down with a blank sheet of paper and start working... It seemed to me that all this would be read by readers sometime in the future, not soon. This “future” turned out to be very close. In September-October 1993, events occurred in Russia that forced me to sit down again with blank sheets of paper, and a few weeks later I finished the manuscript. I am sure that now, and not in a year or two, I must tell what happened to the country. August 91 and October 93 connected into one unbreakable chain, the empire collapsed, we witnessed a painful and cruel farewell to an entire era. My book is an attempt to explain. An attempt now, and not later, to figure out what happened to Russia, an attempt to understand where we are going, what awaits us all ahead.