Twenty years in the making, this collection presents 122 top-level Soviet, European and American records on the superpowers' role in the annus mirabilis of 1989. Consisting of Politburo minutes
diary entries from Gorbachev's senior aide, Anatoly Chernyaev
meeting notes and private communications of Gorbachev with George H.W. Bush, Margaret Thatcher, Helmut Kohl and Francois Mitterrand
and high-level CIA analyses. Complementing the documents is the inclusion for the first time of the proceedings of an extraordinary face-to-face mutual interrogation (with scholars and documents ) in 1998 of Russian and American senior former officials-Gorbachev advisers Anatoly Chernyaev and Georgy Shakhnazarov, Shevardnadze aide Sergei Tarasenko, U.S. Ambassador Jack Matlock and CIA chief Soviet analyst Douglas MacEachin-aimed at assessing and explaining Moscow and Washington's policies during the miraculous year of 1989.