Moving from the adoption of the post-Stalin Constitution of 1977 through its subsequent implementation under Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko to the radical legal restructuring of the Gorbachev years, Robert Sharlet traces the gradual evolution of a nascent constitutionalism in the erstwhile USSR. Sharlet, a noted authority on Soviet law and constitutional development, demonstrates the gradual transformation of law from an instrument of Communist Party rule into the new rules of the game for nonauthoritarian political development. In effect, he argues, one of Gorbachev's most durable...