Figures in a Red Landscape (Woodrow Wilson Center Press)

A newspaper editor from a village in the Urals fights to bring glasnost to the provinces. A group of peasants experiment with private agriculture, recreating a world destroyed by collectivization in the 1920s. A model "Soviet Man" refuses to lose faith in socialism. The mayor of a provincial town works for change, but admits that real reform will wait for the next generation. An orthodox priest describes his vision of tolerance for his vast country - two days before his violent assassination. In "Figures in a Red Landscape", Pilar Bonet, Moscow correspondent for "El Pais", offers a series of compelling portraits of ordinary - and extraordinary - Soviet citizens at a time of dramatic change. Capturing hopes and fears inspired by the historic events of 1990 and 1991, they are memorable accounts of people directly involved in a variety of incidents and issues - from the ecological catastrophe of the Aral Sea to the fate of oil workers in Siberia, from the seeds of anti-communism to the rise of Boris Yeltsin, from the problems of a market economy to the new challenges of "risk" and "individuality".