The book is equal parts history and eyewitness account, covering the collapse of the Soviet Union. Opening with the excavation of the corpses of men killed in the Katyn massacre, "Lenin's Tomb" begins by describing the structural flaws present from the country's early days, and then uses individual accounts from a wide variety of contemporary individuals to display the modern consequences of these historical errors and cruelties. Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire is a bestselling work by David Remnick. Often cited as an example of New Journalism, it won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1994.