Distinguished historian of the Soviet period Robert V. Daniels offers a penetrating survey of the evolution of the Soviet system and its ideology. In a tightly woven series of analyses written during his career-long inquiry into the Soviet Union, Daniels explores the Soviet experience from Karl Marx to Boris Yeltsin and shows how key ideological notions were altered as Soviet history unfolded.
The book exposes a long history of American misunderstanding of the Soviet Union, leading up to the "grand surprise" of its collapse in 1991. Daniels's perspective is always original, and his assessments, some worked out years ago, are strikingly prescient in the light of post-1991 archival revelations. Soviet Communism evolved and decayed over the decades, Daniels argues, through a prolonged revolutionary process, combined with the challenges of modernization and the personal struggles between ideologues and power-grabbers.

History is always full of surprises as it unfolds before us. The Soviet Union, for decades a seemingly frozen monolith of totalitarian rigidity and paranoid bellicosity, suddenly finds itself under a leader in the person of Mikhail Gorbachev who calls for "radical restructuring," openness," and even a "revolution." Outsiders justly wonder if this m

"The Fourth Revolution" examines the momentous social changes that have taken place in the United States in recent decades, placing protests such as the civil rights movement, feminism, and student demonstrations against the Vietnam War in the context of other cultural "revolutions" in American history. By comparing the unique events of the 1960s with the religious revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries (the first revolution), the democratic political revolution of the 18th century (the second revolution), and the economic revolution of the New Deal during the first half of the 20th century (the third revolution), "The Fourth Revolution "shows how the cyclical nature of social movements has come to define not only American history but also the nation's ideal of progress. Extending to controversies during the past quarter-century over everything from gay rights to the culture wars, this absorbing book also looks ahead to potential targets of the next (fifth) revolution, including militant environmentalism, a repudiation of science and technology, and an ethic of anti-success.

The Fourth Revolution examines the momentous social changes that have taken place in the United States in recent decades, placing protests such as the civil rights movement, feminism, and student demonstrations against the Vietnam War in the context of other cultural revolutions in American history. By comparing the unique events of the 1960s with the religious revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries (the first revolution), the democratic political revolution of the 18th century (the second revolution), and the economic revolution of the New Deal during the first half of the 20th century (the third revolution), The Fourth Revolution shows how the cyclical nature of social movements has come to define not only American history but also the nation's ideal of progress. Extending to controversies during the past quarter-century over everything from gay rights to the culture wars, this absorbing book also looks ahead to potential targets of the next (fifth) revolution, including militant environmentalism, a repudiation of science and technology, and an ethic of anti-success.

History is always full of surprises as it unfolds before us. The Soviet Union, for decades a seemingly frozen monolith of totalitarian rigidity and paranoid bellicosity, suddenly finds itself under a leader in the person of Mikhail Gorbachev who calls for "radical restructuring," openness," and even a "revolution." Outsiders justly wonder if this means a new era of reform, or whether the nature of the Soviet system and its historical roots makes real change impossible. This book is based on a series of articles that the author wrote during the first two years after Gorbachev assumed the Soviet leadership in March 1985.

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor and Francis, an informa company.

"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, anti-imperial principles that inspired the original moderate phase of the Russian Revolution of 1917. Emphasizing continuity with the past, Daniels questions conventional solutions about future political and economic alternatives in the region. By stressing the way that reform unfolded, not just in the Breshnev era, but in the long historical background, Daniels provides an original and integrated interpretation of Soviet history.

In the ten years since the last edition of this book, the world has undergone tremendous and, seemingly irrevocable change. With the virtual demise of the international communist movement and the increasing isolation of the remaining old-style regimes, communism has become history. Robert V. Daniels has updated his definitive work to chronicle the last years of international communism. It contains a new chapter with 22 documents pertaining to such key ideas and events as perestroika, the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, and the Tiananmen Massacre. Together with his Documentary History of Communism in Russia, this book provides a complete documentary history of the communist movement from Lenin and world revolution to Gorbachev and the end of world communism.

From Paris to Peking, from Saigon to Washington, the pillars of the postwar world tottered on the brink of collapse in 1968. "Year of the Heroic Guerrilla" is the first global analysis of that universal upheaval.

Daniels vividly depicts the great crises of that era: the Tet offensive and the abdication of Lyndon Johnson; the denouncement of the counterculture; the fissuring of the civil rights movement and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.; the student revolt at Columbia University; the May uprising in France that nearly overthrew the Fifth Republic; the "cultural revolution" in China; the chilling of the Prague Spring by the Soviet army; and, finally, the convention and riots in Mayor Daley's Chicago, signaling the downturn of the revolutionary spirit in America.

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 the Soviet system as it evolved after the Revolution is shown to be a synthesis of revolutionary rhetoric, dictatorial pragmatism, and traditional Russian kinds of behavior. Daniels points out that no part of the world is more alien to Americans than Russia, and he evokes parallels and contrasts with the American experience to clarify the driving forces behind this ill-understood superpower.