First published in Russian as Posle Kremlya, Moskva : Vesʹ Mir, 2014.

Includes index.

To my readers -- Preface: Perestroika and the future -- Trying to bury me -- I. After Perestroika -- The 1990s : Defending Perestroika -- My last day in the Kremlin -- A new beginning, without presidential immunity -- Shock therapy -- The search for a scapegoat, threats -- The Gorbachev Foundation : its first reports -- December 1991 : politics and morality -- Salvation in work -- Attempts to "destabilize" me -- The "Trial of the CPSU" -- First results of shock therapy -- A year after the coup -- My stance -- The slide towards social catastrophe -- On the brink of crisis -- Fateful decisions, fateful days -- A state of emergency is not the way to stability -- Defects of the new Constitution -- 1994 gets off to a bad start -- Economists advise but the government is not listening -- Nikita Khrushchev : lessons in courage and lessons from mistakes -- The Union could have been saved -- The economy : what now? -- Meetings in the regions -- Chechnya : a war that could have been avoided -- 1995 : 10 years of Perestroika -- The intelligentsia -- Government and society -- The need for an alternative -- Breaking through the conspiracy of silence -- Letters relating to the 1996 presidential election campaign -- Discrediting elections -- The final years of the millennium -- The Gorbachev Foundation's "First Five-Year Plan" -- The elections fail to bring stability -- The storm breaks in 1998 -- How to come out of the crisis? -- Letters of support -- Raisa Gorbacheva --

II. Whither Russia? -- Putin : the beginning -- The new president : hopes, problems, fears -- What is Glasnost? -- The heavy burden of the presidency -- My social-democratic choice -- Russia needs social democracy -- Issues and more issues -- The zero years of the 2000s? -- The Yukos affair -- A party of new bureaucrats -- A second presidential term : what for? -- A new direction, or more of the same? -- Full of contradictions : the first decade of the new millennium -- New elections -- Democracy in distress -- Operation Successor -- Ideas and people -- Saakashvili's adventure and the West : my reaction -- Ordeal by global crisis -- Defending the credo of Perestroika -- Disturbing trends -- My eightieth birthday -- Russian politics in a quandary -- A new Era of Stagnation? -- The presidential "reshuffle" and the Duma elections -- For fair elections! -- Society awakens -- A decision to tighten the screws -- Some letters of support in recent years -- The need for dialogue between the government and society --

III. Today's uneasy world -- The relevance of New Thinking -- Challenges of globalization -- The challenge of security -- Ban the bomb! -- Consequences of NATO expansion -- The world after 9/11 -- Poverty is a political problem -- Responding to the environmental challenge -- The water crisis -- The threat of climate change -- We need a new model of development -- Meetings in America : George Shultz and Ronald Reagan -- Partners should be equal -- The role of the United States in the world -- "America needs its own Perestroika" -- The election of Obama -- The future of Europe -- Germany -- On a solid foundation -- Major figures in European politics -- Looking East : China, Russia and Japan -- A Simmering Region : Egypt and Syria -- Russia and Ukraine -- History Is Not Fated -- Conclusion: Reflections of an optimist.