Decolonization, Democratization, and Communist Reform: The Soviet Collapse in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

The collapse of the Soviet experiment, and of the country that embodied it, has surely been among the most dramatic and consequential events of the postwar world, and indeed of the twentieth century. But how might this event, and the processes leading to it, be placed most effectively in a world historical context? How should world historians, as opposed to Russian or Soviet historians, treat the passing of the Soviet Union into history?