The End of the Communist Revolution puts perestroika firmly in its long-term historical perspective, as the final stage of a long revolutionary process, and within the context of Leninism, Stalinism and Breshnevism. Daniels puts forward a new interpretation of the striking events in the latter half of the 20th-century which led to the downfall of Gorbachev and Communism in the late Soviet Union. Embracing the whole Soviet experience since 1917, he argues that Gorbachev's reforms did not constitute a new revolution, but a moderate revolutionary revival with a return to the decentralist,...

Robert V. Daniels' book Russia: The Roots of Confrontation, first published in 1985, examines the historical contrasts between East and West and elucidates the Russian enigma. The book springs from the thesis that Russia's national character and its international relations can be understood only in light of the traumas and triumphs, privation and privileges that the country weathered in its unique past under the tsars and the Soviets. The author lays to rest the mistaken American view that Soviet behavior was simply the application of Marxist revolutionary ideology. The character of...