This book systematically analyzes the dramatic contrast in the results of post-Stalinist reform in China and Russia. In the late 1980s a "transition orthodoxy" about how to reform the communist systems of political economy emerged. It argued for a political revolution to overthrow the communist regimes. This was thought to be intrinsically desirable and functionally necessary in order to permit economic reform.

The orthodoxy believed that the essence of economic reform was a rapid move towards a free market economy. It formed the intellectual foundation of the advice given by the Bretton Woods organizations.

1. This book shows that this orthodoxy was deeply flawed: the policies which flowed from it were the primary cause of the Soviet disaster; the decision not to follow it was the main reason for China's enormous success in its reform program.