In late December 1991—some 74 years after the Bolsheviks had taken power in Russia under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin—the Soviet Communist regime and the Soviet state itself ceased to exist. The demise of the Soviet Union occurred less than seven years after Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Communist Party. Soon after taking office in March 1985, Gorbachev had launched a series of drastic political and economic changes that he hoped would improve and strengthen the Communist system and bolster the country's superpower status. But in the end, far from strengthening Communism, Gorbachev's policies of perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (official openness) led inadvertently to the collapse of the Soviet regime and the unraveling of the Soviet state. This article analyzes the breakup of the Soviet Union, explaining why that outcome, which had seemed so unlikely at the outset, occurred in such a short period of time.

Eight experts on the history of East-Central Europe offer commentaries about the book Imposing, Maintaining, and Tearing Open the Iron Curtain: The Cold War and East-Central Europe, 1945–1990 , edited by Mark Kramer and Vít Smetana. The commentators discuss the main contributions of the book and highlight the important questions it raises as well as the issues requiring further research.

This review essay looks at Stephen Kotkin's acclaimed but controversial book, Uncivil Society . Although some aspects of Kotkin's analysis may be dubious, his approach overall is insightful and convincing. Kotkin gives due weight to mass mobilization, but he rightly focuses on the collapse of will within the Communist establishment.

This is the concluding part of a three-part article that discusses the transformation of Soviet-East European relations in the late 1980s and the impact of the sweeping changes in Eastern Europe on the Soviet Union. This final segment is divided into two main parts: First, it provides an extended analysis of the bitter public debate that erupted in the Soviet Union in 1990 and 1991 about the “loss” of Eastern Europe and the collapse of the Warsaw Pact. The debate roiled the Soviet political system and fueled the hardline backlash against Mikhail Gorbachev. Second, this part of the article offers a concluding section that highlights the theoretical implications of the article as a whole. The article, as the conclusion shows, sheds light on recent literature concerning the diffusion of political innovations and the external context of democratization and political change.

This is the second part of a three-part article that looks at the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and the repercussions of those events in the Soviet Union. The first part focused on the “direct” spillover from Eastern Europe into the Soviet Union, whereas this segment examines the “indirect” spillover, which took four forms:(1) the discrediting of Marxist-Leninist ideology, (2) the heightened sense of the Soviet regime's own vulnerability, (3) the diminished potential for the use of force in the USSR to curb internal unrest, and (4) the “demonstration effect” and “contagiousness” of regime change and democratization in Eastern Europe. These factors together made it considerably more difficult for Gorbachev to prevent the Soviet Union from unraveling. The final part of the article will be published in the next issue of the journal.

The largely peaceful collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe in 1989 reflected the profound changes that Mikhail Gorbachev had carried out in Soviet foreign policy. Successful though the process was in Eastern Europe, it had destabilizing repercussions within the Soviet Union. The effects were both direct and indirect. The first part of this two-part article looks at Gorbachev's policy toward Eastern Europe, the collapse of Communism in the region, and the direct “spillover” from Eastern Europe into the Soviet Union. The second part of the article, to be published in the next issue of the journal, discusses the indirect spillover into the Soviet Union and the fierce debate that emerged within the Soviet political elite about the “loss” of the Eastern bloc—a debate that helped spur the leaders of the attempted hardline coup d'état in August 1991.

The East German uprising and the downfall of Lavrentii Beria had profound short- and long-term effects on Soviet policy toward Germany and on the political configuration of the Eastern bloc. This article, the final segment of a three-part analysis of Soviet—East European relations in the early post-Stalin era, discusses the changes in the Soviet bloc at some length. It then ties together the three parts of the analysis by exploring the theoretical implications of the linkages between internal and external events in the Soviet Union and East-Central Europe in 1953, drawing on recent theoretical literature about the connection between domestic and international politics.

Part 2 of this three-part article discusses the aftermath of the June 1953 East German uprising, particularly the arrest on 26 June of Lavrentii Beria, who until then had been one of the most powerful figures in Moscow. Beria's arrest came not because of any high-level disagreements about policy, but simply because Beria's rivals wanted to remove him from the post-Stalin succession struggle. Newly released documents shed valuable light on the plot against Beria, which was intricate and extremely risky, yet ultimately successful.

The death of Josif Stalin was followed by momentous changes in the Soviet bloc. Part 1 of this two-part article considers how and why these changes came about, looking at the interaction between domestic and external events. It explores the nature of Soviet decision making, the impact of events in East-Central Europe, the implementation of Moscow's new policy, and the use of Soviet troops to put down a large-scale uprising in East Germany. Politics, Power, and U.S. Policy in Iran, 1950–1953