The Return

Treisman (political science, Univ. of California, Los Angeles; After the Deluge: Regional Crises and Political Consolidation in Russia) looks back over the 25 years since Mikhail Gorbachev began his attempts to reform the Soviet Union's political system. Ironically, Gorbachev's goal was to preserve the existing order, not to subvert it, but in the end he turned the country away from its Communist path and returned it to a Western European economy. Treisman provides a carefully detailed account of the events, personal interactions, and crucial decisions that created such a monumental shift, but his main concern is the why of the change. He discusses such factors as the glaring lack of consumer goods, growth of public opinion polling, increasing resignations from Communist Party membership, ethnic nationalism in non-Slavic regions (especially the war in Chechnya), and wide swings in the price of oil, a chief export. The combination of these shifting forces was ultimately beyond the control of the principal actors. Treisman assigns no blame, merely discussing which factors were important when.