It is remarkably easy to take revolutionary changes for granted after the event. Yet, as this fascinating account shows, the disappearance of communist rule in Eastern Europe was the result of a conjunction of long-term decay and collapse from within with a fundamental shift in the second half of the 1980s in the policy of the Soviet Union. This study sheds light on the dynamics of the decline of an empire, on the complex interaction of economic, political and security factors in both domestic and foreign policy in shaping revolutionary change. It suggests that the East European states have to contend with a burdensome domestic and foreign policy legacy far more intractable than many initially assumed as they redefine their relations with the successor states of the Soviet Union, and with the rest of Eastern Europe, Europe and the rest of the world.