A joint Rand-Columbia conference of well-qualified experts on the U.S.S.R., held in April 1981, took the 26th Congress-though half-dismissing it as a non-event-as a takeoff point for consideration of future directions of Soviet policy, domestic and foreign. The crucial matter, as the editors point out, is what effects the inevitable economic pressures are going to have on the political system. Though neither seeking nor finding consensus, the individual contributors are together in predicting hard decisions, if not systemic crisis, for the post-Brezhnev leadership.