The End of the Communist Revolution

About this book

The End of the Communist Revolution puts Perestroika firmly in its long-term historical perspective as the final stage of a long revolutionary process, and within the context of Leninism, Stalinism and Breshnevism. Daniels puts forward a new interpretation of the striking events in the later half of the twentieth-century which led to the downfall of Gorbachev and Communism in the late Soviet Union. Embracing the whole Soviet experience since 1917, he argues that Gorbachev's reforms did not constitute a new revolution, but a `moderate revolutionary revival' with a return to the decentralist, anti-imperial principles that inspired the original moderate phase of the Russian Revolution of 1917. Emphasizing continuity with the past, Daniels questions conventional solutions about future political and economic alternatives in the region. By stressing the way that reform unfolded, not just in the Breshnev era, but in the long historical background, Daniels provides an original and integrated interpretation of Soviet history.