"The successor. The story of Boris Nemtsov and the country in which he did not become president" is a political biography of Boris Nemtsov written by journalist Mikhail Fishman. Nemtsov entered public life in the late 80s, at the height of Gorbachev's perestroika, in the 90s he became governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region, made a rapid career, and at one time Yeltsin saw him as his successor. In the noughties, he joined the opposition to the government, and on February 27, 2015, he was killed on the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge opposite the Kremlin. Nemtsov became a participant and witness of all the most important events in modern Russian history, from the first free elections and the 1991 coup to the rallies on Bolotnaya Square in 2011-2012 and the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Based on hundreds of interviews, as well as archival data and memoirs, this book is a journey through the Russian history of the last thirty years. Going through all the major milestones of the country's recent past with Nemtsov, the author is looking for an answer to the question: how and why Russia lost its freedom.