Includes index.

Grand failure: Leninist legacy -- Stalinist catastrophe -- Stagnant Stalinism -- Paradox of reform -- Soviet disunion: From vision to revisionism -- Ten dynamics of disunion -- Evolving or decaying communism? -- Organic rejection: Ideological transportation and transmutation -- Polish society's self-emancipation -- From social solidarity to political pluralism -- Emerging regional unrest -- Imperial retrenchment -- Commercial communism: China's double three tries -- Political conflict and the birth of reform -- Reform strategy and ideological flexibility -- Real cultural revolution -- Discredited praxis: Political irrelevance in the developed world -- Socioeconomic failure in the developing countries -- Global ideological disintegration -- Agony of communism: General crisis -- Historical record -- Future prospects -- Post-communism.