Rethinking the Soviet collapse : Sovietology, the death of communism and the new Russia

This text is informed by the view that part of the answer to the conundrum - "Did we fail to anticipate the end of the Cold War?" - lies in a dissection of the ways in which the USSR was theorized by its leading practitioners in the West.The contributors in the field have come together to reflect on the system and subject of Soviet studies as it was, but also to consider such issues as why it proved so difficult to build the market, civil society and "actually viable independent states" outside the old Union.

Is the former USSR in transition, statis or only awaiting further disintegration?

Are we moving back to a reconstructed Russian Empire? Or even a new Cold War?