As this book is intended to be accessible to the general reader, in the main text I use a simplified transliteration, without soft signs, ‘-yi’ endings and the like, and using ‘yo’ for ë. The exceptions are those cases where a word or name is so familiar in one form – such as Gorbachev, rather than Gorbachyov – that this would seem perverse. However, the references do use full, conventional transliteration, to ensure researchers can most easily find the sources in question. On the other hand, I have kept the Russian plurals, which typically end in ‘–i’ or ‘–y’, to avoid too much mixing of English and Russian.