Description: How could the West have better prepared for the fall of communism and gained a clearer picture of Russia's new political landscape? By cultivating awareness of the abiding democratic aspirations of the Russian people. Petro traces the history of those aspirations, exposing Russia's involvement in the democratic quest at the heart of Western values.
Brief description: Nicolai N. Petro is Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island, and the author of The Predicament of Human Rights: The Carter and Reagan Policies.
Review Quotes: [This is a] useful contribution to the history of Russian political thought...Petro also provides a concise history of organized dissent in Russia and of the emergence of the rudiments of a civil society in the second half of the 1980s.--Archie Brown "Comparative Politics"