In late August 1991, there were two coups in Moscow in three days. On a Monday, hardline Communists overthrew the reformist President Gorbachev. On the Wednesday, Boris Yeltsin, the elected President of the Russian Federation, overthrew them. He restored Gorbachev, but effectively transferred power to himself.

I wanted to see if the Soviet Union truly was falling apart, so that week I flew to Moscow without a visa. If the Soviet system still worked, I reckoned, my lack of visa would cause me to be briefly detained and then sent straight back home. At Moscow airport, I was duly stopped and made to retrace my steps, escorted. Realising that I was about to be shoved on to a plane to London, I sat...