● IN 1987 I FLEW TO MOSCOW with a couple of colleagues to report on life for young people in the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev. Glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) were roaring ahead. The Cold War was thawing and even Margaret Thatcher had declared that she liked the Soviet leader.
Moscow was a revelation: the imposing grandeur of Red Square, the pristine metro stations bedecked in marble and bas-reliefs, the confident Soviet iconography, all these gave the sense that this was the epicentre of a powerful, global
