For almost half a century, the USSR and the USA waged a cold war, which often threatened to turn into a “hot” one. The division of the world along ideological boundaries seemed eternal. But suddenly one of the sides lowered the flag. A professor of history at Harvard University sets out the chronology of the last five months of 1991, which changed our country and the world, and offers a balanced assessment of the events that led to and accompanied the death of the USSR and the beginning of the independent life of Russia, Ukraine and other former Soviet republics. In 2015, the author received two prestigious awards : Pushkin House Russian Book Prize (for the best English-language book about Russia) and Lionel Gelber Prize (for the best non-fiction book about international relations and politics).