The history of Communism in the Soviet Union appears at an end. The repressive partisan regime is gone, but we cannot yet see the shape of the system that will replace it. What is clear is that there still exists a need to understand the foundations upon which the Communists built their institutions. The strategies of the West to help the Soviet system transform itself will be valueless unless they take into account the institutional order under which that society labored for seventy years. The transition we are witnessing is incomplete, and events have alarmingly revealed that there remain forces in Soviet society to which democratic change is anathema. Moreover, the vast majority of Soviet citizens have never lived under any other kind of system; those on the outside who are trying to help them build self-governing institutions must understand their experience.

Finally, to realize how the partisan, totalitarian state established and maintained itself is to be well armed against similar developments in the future. An Institutional Theory of Communist Regimes explains Communism as an ideological and political phenomenon. It describes Communism's doctrine, its rise in Russia, its evolution, and the mechanics of its demise. This powerful book clarifies why the Soviet experiment has failed. It delineates the political and economic mechanisms that are destroying Communist governments around the world by forcing their ruling elites to look for solutions contradicting the very logic of Communism's institutional design. The author cautions that much of Russian history is made up of cycles of autocratic leadership, occasionally giving way to troubled and unsettled times until another autocrat gains dominance.

The road to reform in Russia itself is more difficult, he shows, than in the Baltic republics and the former Soviet dependencies in East-Central Europe. An Institutional Theory of Communist Regimes is an invaluable guide to the lessons of the Communist experience and to the practical problems the disintegration of the Communist bloc poses for the world.