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This edition of the Lonely Planet guide to the USSR was published just as the Soviet Union collapsed.

The book was published with a note saying that the due to events occuring at the time of going to press there were doubts about which countries would continue to be in the Soviet Union and whether the name USSR would still be in use.

In effect, this book was a guide to a country that no longer existed.

It's also interesting to think how technology has reduced to possiblity of an object like this being created again. Not only are modern digital printing methods more flexible and allow the text to be more easily updated at the last minute, but also the internet means that people have access to instantly updated information.

So this book symbolises two of the great changes that happened in the 20th century: the collapse of the communist system of government and the creation of instantly updated sources of information on the internet.