The Russian press has undergone huge transformations in the years since the death of Konstantin Chernenko in early 1985. Every change at any level in Russia in the supervening period has been reflected in its press. Перестройка (Perestroika) has been followed by the economic ‘cold shower’ of early post-communism and then by the less dramatic but still inexorably transforming period of reform under successor prime ministers and presidents: all these have wrought tremendous changes in Russia’s political landscape.