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Communist parties ruled sixteen states over the course of the 20th century. At communistsm's high point, its adherents envisioned global triumph. Today, however, only five communist regimes remain in power. Why? In this book, George W. Breslauer, who has spent decades studying the evolution of communist states, provides a sweeping history of the world communist movement, focusing in particular on what communist states shared in common and why they began to differ from each other overt ime. Breslauer finds that the communist regimes all came to power in the context of warfare or its aftermath. Following the Soviet example, they all went on to "build socialism" according to a Stalinist template and were initially dedicated to "anti-imperialist struggle" as members of a world communist movement. But their common features. But their common features gave way to diversity, difference and defiance after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953. For many reasons, and in many ways, those differences soon blew apart the world communist movement and eventually led to the collapse of European communism. While the dream of world communism is dead, the future of the remaining communist regimes that remain in power is uncertain. An accessible history of one of the most important political phenomena of the past 150 years, this volume provides readers with a crisp account of the entire movement – from the theories of Marx and Lenin to the on-the-ground policies of Stalin, Mao, Gorbachev, Deng, and other communist leaders – that culminates in our own era.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Original Title -- Original Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- List of Tables -- Preface -- I. Interpreting Soviet Strategy -- 1. On Collaborative Competition -- 2. Soviet Policy in the Middle East, 1967-72: Unalterable Antagonism or Collaborative Competition? -- 3. The Soviet Union and the Palestinian Issue -- 4. Soviet Behavior toward the Lebanon War, 1982-84 -- 5. The Soviet Union and the Iran-Iraq War, 1980-88 -- 6. Gorbachev's Middle East Strategy -- II. The Sources of Soviet Strategy: Consensus and Conflict -- 7. Militants, Moderates, and Centrists: Soviet Perspectives on the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1971-87 -- 8. The Soviet View of the U.S.-Israeli Partnership -- III. Prospects for Superpower Cooperation -- 9. Perspectives on Superpower Crisis Management and Conflict Resolution in the Arab-Israeli Conflict -- 10. Learning, Politics, and Interaction: Implications for Superpower Conflict Mitigation and Crisis Prevention -- Afterword, Fall 1988-Spring 1989 -- Index.

Gorbachev and Yeltsin as Leaders examines the strategies employed by Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin to build leadership authority. Political leaders often use a combination of coercion, material reward, and persuasion, but Professor Breslauer focuses on the power of ideas, as leaders use them to mobilize support and to craft an image as effective problem solvers, indispensable consensus builders, and symbols of national unity. In Khrushchev and Brezhnev as Leaders: Building Authority in Soviet Politics (1982), he documented Khrushchev's and Brezhnev's domestic policy strategies; this book handles domestic and foreign policies. All chapters compare Gorbachev and Yeltsin and Khrushchev and Brezhnev, mostly analyzing the changes in policy, the strategies, and the political dilemmas that are common to all four administrations. The book discusses the ways in which authority building was affected by political constraints unique to each of the stages