The new cold war : revolutions, rigged elections and pipeline politics in the former Soviet Union / Mark MacKinnon.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 281-292) and index.

"When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and the Soviet Union collapsed two years later, liberal democracy was supposed to fill the void left by Soviet Communism. Some Eastern Europeans greeted change, but the citizens of the "Evil Empire" itself saw little of the promised freedom, and more of the same old despots and corruption." "Recently, a second wave of reform - Serbia in 2000, Georgia in 2003, Ukraine in 2004, and Kyrgyzstan in 2005 - has proven almost as monumental as those in Berlin and Moscow. The people of the Eastern bloc, aided in no small part by Western money and advice, are again rising up and demanding an end to autocracy. And once more, the Kremlin is battling the White House every step of the way." "Combining color from the streets of Belgrade, Tbilisi and Kiev and interviews with key figures - including Mikhail Saakashvili, Viktor Yushchenko, Yulia Tymoshenko, Mikhail Gorbachev and Eduard Shevardnadze - the book weaves together events from half a dozen countries over a four-year time-span to show that each "revolution" was part of a bigger story. It also looks ahead to the battles still to come - in Belarus, the Caucasus, and Central Asia." "Mark MacKinnon spent many of these years as a journalist in Moscow, and his view of the story and access to those involved remains unparalleled. With The New Cold War, he reveals the links between these democratic revolutions - and George Soros, the idealistic American billionaire behind them - in a major investigation into the forces that are quietly reshaping the post-Cold War world."--Jacket.