’Unbreakable union’: the USSR and a sovietologist bow out: Memoirs 1984-2025

This is the fifth, and final, volume of Martin Nicholson’s memoirs. It covers the period 1984 to his death. Sadly, he died early in 2025 with the volume unpublished. It is now published by his family. The period covers his unexpected return to Moscow for a third posting, the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev, the rivalry between him and Boris Yeltsin and the dramatic break-up of the Soviet Union. Following the subsequent lifting of travel restrictions under the former Soviet Union he visited several areas previously almost unknown to British diplomats and he describes these in detail. As he approached retirement he includes some of his thoughts on the future which ring true thirty years on. As in previous volumes, the book covers many family events, including the marriage of both children and the arrival of grandchildren, together with the deaths of both parents and parents in law.