Robert Service has written an informative and necessary book on the catastrophe that overtook Russia in the 1990s. It is a tribute to the author that he reaches conclusions at odds with his own, earlier support for Boris Yeltsin, who ruled the country in these years.The misery and loss of life endured by the long-suffering Russians in the past decade has led 67% of them to see it as the worst decade they can remember, according to a poll Service cites. The Brezhnev era was the only period to be seen favourably by a majority (51%). The devastating impact of the free market and privatisation helps to explain this. Life expectancy for men dropped from 64 in the mid-1980s to 57 in the mid-1990s, and is now believed to be about 60 years. Women live some 10 years longer but their life expectancy has also dropped by four years. The collapse of welfare and health care, the failure to pay wages and pensions for months at a time, spiralling gangsterism, drunkenness and hopelessness have all contributed to population loss of about 0,5% a year — even in a time of net immigration by refugees from other former Soviet republics.The wars in Chechnya have resulted in ”tens of thousands” of fatalities on both sides. While a small minority grew wealthy, the mass of the population was plunged into a poverty and distress not seen since the 1940s.In the 1990s there was, of course, no Great Terror, no Great War, no mass famine. But there was a social and economic breakdown sufficient to halt natural population growth and send it into reverse. All this happened — together with state-assisted robbery of national assets and the reduction of Grozny to rubble — at the hands of a supposedly democratising regime with the support of Western governments.Writing contemporary history is difficult — sources are thinner, perspective difficult; there is no established narrative to use or contest. Service has braved these difficulties and produced a work that is thoughtful and pioneering. — Â