In 1991 Monica Attard stood on a tank and shouted the news of a coup in the Soviet Union across the world. Her reporting of history in the making won her three Walkley awards.
As the ABC's Moscow correspondent from 1990 to 1994, Attard had a front row seat at some of the most dramatic international political events this century. She witnessed Gorbachev's final year of power, the 1991 coup and the collapse of the Communist Party which would leave Russia to Boris Yeltsin and capitalism.
In 'Russia: Which Way Paradise?' Attard offers a unique insider's view of the old and the new Russia. By the time she was posted to Moscow, she had been a regular visitor since 1983. Her knowledge of Russian life enabled her to live and work in the community where she could report the changes Russians were experiencing through their eyes.
Attard brings the stories behind the headlines to life by intertwining the views of ordinary Russians, including friends with widely diverse political beliefs, with the unfolding of events which led to the collapse of communism and the rise of capitalism.
The result is a rich, lively and highly readable account of what it means to be Russian, with all its contradictions, and the volatile mix of passionate idealism, political intrigue and endemic corruption that has made Russia what it is today.
