Paranoid Tabloid Journalists and the villain of TMFB?

In Paul Simpson (ed.), The Rough Guide to James Bond (2002) (pp. 59-60) there is the following interesting passage in the review section on John Gardner's The Man From Barbarossa (1991):

"[General Yevgeny] Yuskovich is the Russian general from hell, the kind of figure conjured up by paranoid tabloid writers with aspace to fill and readers to terrify. Gardner uses him here to change tack, playing up political inbtrigue, in an attempt, presumably, to answer those critics who insisted that his Bond novels were becoming ever more irrelevant. The book seems a retread of Gardner's Icebreaker, only this time the villain who unites the intelligence agencies against him is not a Nazi nostalgia freak but a Communisdt bnostalgia freak."

Now, this is a very interesting passage as I happen to be reading The Man From Barbarossa just at this present moment and am started a lenghty new The Bondologist Blog article on it, as well.

I was wondering if any members here on CBn would happen to have any old cutting/memories of paranoid tabloid journalism about renegade Russian generals from the period of say 1989 until 1999?

What were your thoughts on reading The Man From Barbarossa when it first came out in a very changeable world in 1991?

Did you feel that John Gardner had finally delivered a James Bond novel that seemed to be lifted from the newspaper headlines of the day?

Was he inspired by Soviet hardline generals in the press at the time on qwhich to base his villain General Yevgeny Yuskovich?

"James Bond meets the reality of a secret intelligence officer" seems to be as relevant a topic as ever what with Jeffrey Deaver's Carte Blanche (2011) where his new version of James Bond (born in 1982) is a veteran of the Afghanistan campaign that formed part of the fabled 'War on Terror' and the advent of the release of the James Bond film to top all James Bond films being released to mark the 50th Anniversary of the cinematic James Bond in October 2012 - Skyfall.

I know that this is surely an obscure area of Bondology, but I'm known as the backwoodsman odf the literary James Bond on CBn by now and this stuff really interests me. I hope that I'm not alone in this sentiment, however and I want you CBn members to engage with this complex subject matter and give your reasoned and considered views.

I'm waiting to hear what you think on this one?....as I feel it's more relevant than ever, now in 2012, some 21 years on from the publication of John Gardner's highly experimental novel The Man From Barbarossa.