Since 1989, it has been possible to review what has been published both at home and abroad on the communist states of Central and Eastern Europe and on the Soviet Union itself, from a new perspective. This text asks whether the master narratives that circulated so widely in the West in the half-century since 1945 remain valid.

Stephen R. Graubard is editor of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and its journal, Daedalus, and professor of humanities at Brown University.

A Requiem for Karl Marx, The Breakdown of Communist Regimes, Amidst Moving Ruins, Leninist Endgame, Russia's Road from Communism, Nationalism and Democratic Transition in Post-communist Societies, Political Identities and Electoral Sequences: Spain, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia, The Fearful Asymmetry of War: The Causes and Consequences of Yugoslavia's Demise, Czechoslovakia in the Middle of Transition, Ashes, Ashes : Central Europe after Forty Years, The Italian Paradox: An Exit from Communism, Intellectual Effervescence in China