The Firebird

The memoirs of Andrei Kozyrev, Russia''s first foreign minister (1990-1995), are an honest attempt to understand why Russia-2024 is so different from the one Russian reformers intended to build in the nineties. How did it happen that the country that declared itself a Western-style democracy ended up thirty years later on a par with Iran and North Korea? Who is to blame for this? The Russian elite, which failed the test of money and power? A society nostalgic for the Soviet empire? Or Western politicians who failed to respond to the challenges and opportunities of the moment?In an attempt to answer these questions, Andrei Kozyrev reveals what has so far remained behind the scenes - his private conversations with President Yeltsin, his complex diplomatic game with Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein, details of Moscow''s closed-door negotiations with Western diplomats, and the intrigues in the Kremlin that resulted in Russia not only failing to join NATO, but becoming its number one adversary.Andrei Kozyrev''s book is about how Russia and the West missed the chance for a democratic reorganization of the post-Soviet world. But it is also about the fact that this chance for Russia and the West is not the last one.