The Soviet Legacy

Laird accomplishes two major goals: he provides an analytical, blow-by-blow description of the collapse of the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev's leadership, and he explores the legacy left by the experiment in communism by the Soviet Union. Laird concludes that the burden of that legacy is so great that for many years--probably generations--authoritarian systems, perhaps disguised as democracies, will prevail in the newly independent republics, and the economies of the republics will continue to deteriorate before they get better.

ROY D. LAIRD is Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Russian and East European Studies, at the University of Kansas. Most of the fifteen books and monographs that he has authored or co-authored, edited or co-edited have dealt with Soviet and East European domestic affairs, especially agricultural and peasant affairs. He organized the first International Conference on Soviet and East European Agriculture, which was held at the University of Kansas in 1962. His most recent book, with Betty A. Laird, is A Soviet Lexicon: Important Terms, Concepts, and Phrases.