Midnight Diaries

The only Russian leader in more than a century not to be overthrown or die in office reveals the story of his 10 years in power.

The struggles and upheavals in Russia over the last few years seen from the top - Boris Yeltsin was the President of Russia for a decade. He overcame the coup of 1991, he developed good relationships with world leaders from Clinton to Helmut Kohl. What was the chemistry of his meetings with Jacques Chirac, Tony Blair and Ziang Zhao Min? How did he get on when the Queen visited Moscow, the first British monarch to step onto Russian soil since before the first world war. Yeltsin gives his account of the revolution in Chechnya; he explains his feelings on the former Yugoslavia imbroglio and why Russia couldn't intervene more effectively. Here is Yeltsin on his own often unreliable health, his quintuple bypass surgery, his depression and how he survived to retire on the eve of the new millennium. Yeltsin gives his views on a non Communist Russia, democracy, the struggling economy, the mafia - and his own determination to give the citizens of his country a better future than it s glorious but authoritarian past.