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, no less importantly, on the Soviet Union itself, from a new perspective. Few have chosen to engage in this Herculean task, whether out of a residual civility in not wishing to mock certain aging scholars whose research would appear curiously dated, or out of a sense of fatigue with the whole subject of casting aspersions on mistaken views. A New Europe for the Old? asks whether the master narratives that circulated so widely in the West...

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, no less importantly, on the Soviet Union itself, from a new perspective. Few have chosen to engage in this Herculean task, whether out of a residual civility in not wishing to mock certain aging scholars whose research would appear curiously dated, or out of a sense of fatigue with the whole subject of casting aspersions on mistaken views. A New Europe for the Old? asks whether the master narratives that circulated so widely in the West in the...