Part 1 Introduction 3 Part 2 Before: Information Criminal 9 Part 3 Information Control and the Soviet Crisis 43 Part 4 What Price Socialism? An Economy Without Information 75 Part 5 The KGB, Father of Perestroika 99 Part 6 The Press and the Restoration of History 121 Part 7 Television and the Revival of Politics Part 8 A Normal Country: The Pop Culture Explosion 182 Part 9 Letting Go of the Leninist Faith 212 Part 10 After: The Coup-Proof Society 245 Part 11 Epilogue 276 Part 12 Acknowledgments 291 Part 13 Notes 293 Part 14 Index 305

A brilliant and original account of how Gorbachev's easing of information controls destroyed the illusions of communism and drove the Soviet system to ruin. "Shane writes with such bracing authority, such startling insight, that Dismantling Utopia must be regarded as one of the essential works on the fall of the Soviet Union." -Jonathan Kirsch, Los Angeles Times.