The geography of Russia – vast, unwieldy, exposed – and her tragic history of foreign invasion have created an overriding sense of military vulnerability amongst her leaders that, after the horrors of the Second World War, amounted almost to paranoia. This important study of the years since Brezhnev shows how this obsession with national security have been at the core of Russian thinking right through the reforms of the Gorbachev era and the eventual collapse of the USSR, and continues to dominate the turbulent politics of post-Soviet Russia today.