No more pressing task faces students of Soviet affairs than the development of a rigorous taxonomy for the forces of continuity and change that arise and interact with one another in the USSR. Stephen F. Cohen's essay is an ambitious, provocative, and sorely needed attempt to address this issue. By reviving the traditional but serviceable notions of and conservatism, he provides axes along which numerous important phenomena can be plotted without distortion. And by seeking the historical roots of this polarity, Cohen gives his analysis a depth that is frequently lacking in the present-oriented behavioral fields. Finally, by cautioning that his categories refer only to inchoate tendencies rather than to self-conscious groupings, Cohen stops short of erecting yet another of the sim-^ plistic and Manichean dualities that have long confused the analysis of the Russian and Soviet systems. Assuming that the categories of reform and are somehow pertinent to public life in the USSR, how precisely should the terms be applied? The fact that many Soviets themselves employ them, or terms like them, in public discourse indicatesthat they have validity as descriptive tools. Yet, in using them, one must not ascribe to reformism or any meanings they do not actually bear. A Soviet reformer would, of course, deny that the logical, if extreme, terminal point of his program would be revolution, just as a Soviet conservative would sharply reject the claim that he seeks merely to preserve the established order of things. Nor would this be mere rhetoric. Reform, after all, can be a strategy for the prevention of systemic change, just as can directly challenge the status quo. Lest the terms reform and be applied carelessly, then, Cohen's formulation carries with it the need to distinguish between their use for descriptive and analytic purposes. With this caveat in mind, let us ask how broadly the terms and conservatism can be applied to the analysis of curren-t Soviet affairs. At the outset, one cannot help being struck by how many sources of cleavage in Soviet life do not readily correspond to this dichotomy. The tension between center and periphery, betweein nationalism and internatioinalisml, and between mass society and a class society based on the initelligentsia all elucde the proposed taxonomy. A second category of cleavage in Soviet life runs through the center of the nominally reformist camp and also through the ranks of those generally classified as conservatives. Thus, among nominal reformers, one finds proponents both of consumlerismll and of furtlher capital investnment, just as putative conservatives are divided among those who stress Great Russian aspirations and those whose orientation is primarily toward the Soviet Union or the world Communist movement.