Home › Features › Essays › The Death of Soviet Communism

The Death of Soviet Communism

By Seweryn Bialer
Winter 1991/92
Article Summary and Author Biography

Retrospective analysis of why Gorbachev's reform programmes failed.

Seweryn Bialer is Director of the Research Institute on International Change at Columbia University. Copyright (c) 1991 by Seweryn Bialer.

We're sorry, but Foreign Affairs does not have the copyright to display this article online.

Related

Essay, Jul/Aug 1996
Inside Enemy Archives: The Cold War Reopened
Melvyn P. Leffler

A new conventional wisdom is forming on the Cold War, but the records do not support its hard line. The Soviet Union did not aim at world conquest. It was afraid, and its clients got out of hand. The U.S. and U.S.S.R. share responsibility.

Read
Essay, Jan 1927
Bolshevik Romance and Reality
Victor Chernov

THE conflict within the Russian Communist Party has entered upon a new phase. For the first time all the groups of the Opposition have made an attempt to unite and to create a common platform. At the head of this Opposition bloc are nearly all of the most prominent names in the Bolshevik Party: Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Radek, Sokolnikov, Shliapnikov, Kollontai, Piatakov, Preobrazhensky, Osinsky, and others. As against these names the party majority can set only those of Bukharin, Stalin, Rykov, and Tomsky.

Read
Essay, Special 1985
Special Supplement: The Genesis of Gorbachev's World
Seweryn Bialer and Joan Afferica

Mikhail Gorbachev addressed a closed party audience: "What is at stake today is the ability of the Soviet Union to enter the new millennium in a manner worthy of a great and prosperous power. . . . Without the hard work and complete dedication of each and every one it is not even possible to preserve what has been achieved." This speech, only a part of which has been published, continued: "There has been a failure to perceive properly the need for change in some aspects of production relations," to perceive the need to overcome "the stagnant conservatism of Soviet production relations."

Read