Read the Author's Preface to CONVERSATIONS WITH GORBACHEV: ON PERESTROIKA, THE PRAGUE SPRING, AND THE CROSSROADS OF SOCIALISM, by Mikhail Gorbachev and Zdenek Mlynar, and translated by George Shriver.
Mikhail Gorbachev and Zdenek Mlynar were friends for half a century, since they first crossed paths as students in 1950. Although one was a Russian and the other a Czech, they were both ardent supporters of communism and socialism. One took part in laying the groundwork for and carrying out the Prague spring; the other opened a new political era in Soviet world politics.
In 1993 they decided that their conversations might be of interest to others and so they began to tape-record them. This book is the product of that "thinking out loud" process. It is an absorbing record of two friends trying to explain to one another their views on the problems and events that determined their destinies.
