Arbatov reveals the political ramifications of Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin at the Twentieth Party Congress and the resultant thaw, and describes the coup d'etat that removed Khrushchev from power in 1964. He gives a full report on the re-Stalinization campaign of 1968-1974 and the period of stagnation that followed. It is clear that even in the depths of the Cold War, the monolithic facade that the Soviet Union presented to the world actually contained pockets of open thinking and dissent. As the party's leading expert on the United States, Arbatov offers illuminating analysis of how the Soviet Union's relationship with America evolved from the late 1960s, through the short-lived detente to the "second Cold War" and the second Russian Revolution. He frankly assesses the personalities and leadership qualities of Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, with whom he worked most closely, and Gorbachev, giving us far more complex portraits of these men than we've had before.