From Russia with love
The day the world changed. On Christmas Day 1991 Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as the last leader of the Soviet Union and Boris Yeltsin ordered the red flag to be lowered from the Kremlin. With 20 years hindsight we know why the USSR disappeared, not with fireworks but a damp squib. President Yeltsin inherited a decaying, bankrupt, thoroughly militarised and just as thoroughly corrupt communist empire, which he set out to reform through a shock therapy to create a private sector and open up the country to private investment. Among the first to latch onto this opportunity were a motley crew of Nordic and Indian investors who thought that building the Russian beer market was the opportunity of a lifetime.
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