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The fall of the Soviet empire will preoccupy students of history for a long time to come. If there is no unanimity even now with regard to the collapse of Rome and other empires, the fate of the Soviet Union is bound to be a subject of similar controversy. It will be interpreted and reinterpreted in the future in the light of changing events, there will be orthodox and revisionist views as well as post-revisionist schools, dependent to a large extent on the fate of Russia and the other successor states in the decades to come. The breakdown of 1991 could lead to the re-emergence of a great power on the ruins of the old; equally, the process of disintegration could continue, leading to a long period of tension and perhaps internecine warfare. There are various possibilities in between these extremes. The study of the fall of empires has intrigued historians since time immemorial and, while it is true that each case has been different, there have also been certain common features, or at least similarities. It is also true that certain collapses have been more of a mystery than others. There are dozens of explanations for the decline of Rome ranging from moral degeneration and intellectual crisis (as thought many ancient historians), to racial dilution and demographic problems (O. Seeck), economic decline (the disarray of the monetary system) to the quality of the water supply of the eternal city (slow lead poisoning). While Gibbon had argued that Christianity sapped the morale of the empire so that in the end the civilian population showed inertia in the face of the barbarian invasions, other historians pointed to the high death rate, the presence of too many idle people, the inflation of government officials and overcentralization.1

F or a long time Communists were reluctant to use the term Stalinism, and some shun it even now. "Marx-ism" and later "Leninism" entered the Russian vocabulary as well as the global political dictionary, and "Trotskyism" became a generally accepted term. But the use of "Stalinism" was forbidden in the Soviet Union (Stalin opposed it) and was frowned upon by most Russian party leaders even under glasnost. About a year after he had come to power, Gorbachev said in an interview that the term had been "coined by our enemies," which was incorrect. 1 The crucial question concerned not the authorship but the essence: Had Stalin not established in many respects a political system sui generis and therefore worthy of a name of its own? The answer to this question seems obvious, but the coyness in the ranks of the Soviet leadership persisted. Undeterred by their continuing silence, aheated debate on the causes, origins, and essence of Stalinism came under way during glasnost among Soviet playwrights, philosophers, psychologists, historians, sociologists, and the public at large. Although certain aspects of Stalinism can be understood only with reference to the personality oftheleader (which is also true with regard to Hitler and Mussolini), it is even more obvious that the system did not develop in a vacuum. It had historical and ideological roots; conditions existed that made the rise and victory of Stalinism possible in the first place. It is unlikely (to put it cautiously) that an outlandish system, which was alien to Russian mentality and tradition and totally opposed to the Bolshevik doctrine and practice, would have generated so much enthusiasm, lasted for so long, and would have found supporters even decades after the demise of its founder. Before tuming to the debate that engulfed the Soviet Union under glasnost, we ought to briefly review the Western discussions on Stalinism that preceded by decades those in the East. Generations of Westem students of the Soviet Union had pondered issues such as the relationship between Lenin and Stalin. Had Stalin deviated or was his system merely the continuation of Lenin's work, "full-blown Bolshevism"? There was no agreement on these issues, but a great deal of spadework had been done studying the historical sources and considering their implications. Many of the ideas expressed by Soviet authors under glasnost were quite familiar to Western and Soviet 6migr6 students, such as the Mensheviks who had discussed them from the 1930s onward. For the leftwing Russian 6migrts, the most reprehensible feature of Bolshevism was its ant idemocrat ic character . This bel ief predated Stalinism, it predated even 1917; Trotsky in 1904 and Rosa Luxemburg in 1918 had expressed fears that Lenin's concept of the vanguard party would lead to a more or less permanent dictatorship, with power passing from the party to the Central Committee and ultimately to one ruler. Russian Social Democrats saw these fears confirmed with a vengeance over the years. The great majority of nonsocialist 6migrts were baffled by Stalin's system. Some still believed that Stalin was only pretending to be Abdul Hamid (the most murderous of Turkey's last sultans) that, in reality, he was a closet Trotskyite waiting to export his revolution. 2 Others believed that Stalinism was simply a specific Russian form of fascism or, to be precise, a halfway house on the road to fascism. Nikolai Berdiaev, the philosopher who was exiled from the Soviet Union and became posthumously popular in Moscow under glasnost, wrote in 1937

The huge literature on guerrilla and counter guerrilla warfare published in the nineteen fifties and sixties was based almost entirely on the assumption that this phenomenon constituted a revolution in modern strategy. While it is perfectly correct that 'small war', partisan and guerrilla warfare had fallen into disregard in most industrial countries, it has, in fact, existed for a very long time; guerrilla fighting, for obvious reasons, predates warfare between regular armies.1 It has been argued that the history of guerrilla warfare begins with the Spanish insurrection against Napoleon since the partisans of previous ages were not politically inspired. But it cannot really be seriously maintained that the age of people's wars, of wars of 'national liberation' and of 'wars of opinion' begins in 1808, even if such wars had almost been forgotten in the eighteenth century. The present paper, part of a larger study on the history of guerrilla warfare, deals with the concepts of the theorists of small war between roughly 1750 and 1900, and their views on the utility and the limitations of partisan warfare. To regard these military thinkers as the precursors of modern guerrilla warfare is claiming both too much and too little. Too much, because only a few of them were concerned with the political implications of guerrilla warfare; too little, because from a 'technical' point of view they anticipated most present-day tactics and to regard them as mere forerunners is to belittle their part. The theory of small warfare (petite guerre) has its origins in the seventeenth century, being mainly based on the experience of the Thirty Years War, which, perhaps more than any other, had been a 'war without fronts', the Spanish War of Succession and the Wars of Frederick the Great. These early writings deal with the scope of the activities of relatively small detachments. The American War of Inde

The most plausible case against Zionism, and the one most frequently advanced up to the establishment of the state of Israel, was directed against its basically 'utopian' character. Both those who welcomed the dispersion of the Jews, and those who deplored it, shared the belief that nothing could be done to undo this historical process. It was too late to concentrate millions of Jews in a part of the world that was already settled and which played an important role in world politics. Mankind was progressing towards assimilation, cosmopolitanism, a one-world culture; everywhere economic and social developments were reducing national distinctions. The attempt to arrest the movement of history, to resist this trend, was utopian and reactionary. Assimilation among the Jews of Western Europe had proceeded too far to permit a return to Jewish nationalism. In Eastern Europe on the other hand there was still both a Jewish national consciousness and a real social problem, but this was on such a massive scale that Zionism could not provide a remedy. Before the first world war even leading Zionists thought that in the next twenty to thirty years between Ioo,ooo and a million Jews at most would settle in Palestine; but the 'Jewish problem' affected millions in Eastern Europe, not hundreds of thousands. The critics of Zionism rejected the movement as utopian 'not because something like this has never happened before or because some imagination is needed to envisage such a solution', but for the commonsense reason that even the settlement of several hundreds of thousands and cultural autonomy for the rest would not be a solution. Landauer and Weil, who were among the most sober and best informed early critics of Zionism, disputed the belief that West European Jewry could be preserved from assimilation even if a Jewish state were to come into existence in Palestine. The Jewish question in the West would ultimately be

A LMOST overnight Communism in Africa has become an /"\ international problem of the first magnitude. Ten years * ago, or even five, all that was known, or needed to be known, about the subject could be stated in two or three sen tences mainly of a negative character. Now, in 1961, Africa has replaced the Middle East as the world's chief trouble center, and it is likely to remain the main area of contest between West and East for many years to come. On the African continent the So viet bloc and China have succeeded in gaining important foot holds within a very short space of time. The Communist states are represented in most of the newly independent countries and their envoys are untiring in their exertions. There is a constant stream of cultural and trade missions and other visitors between Moscow, Peking and some African capitals. These activities un doubtedly constitute a serious challenge to the West; but even more important are the efforts of local pro-Communist or na tional Communist groups to gain the upper hand in the struggle for the future of Africa; one can hardly exaggerate the implica tions of the outcome of this struggle. Discussion of the problems facing Communism in tropical Africa (meaning Africa south of the Sahara excluding the Union of South Africa) is frequently hampered by the absence of relia ble facts. To give but one example: On August 2, i960, the exist ence of a Congolese Communist party, with a central committee headed by M. Mwamba-Mukanya, was announced in Leopold ville; it was said to have been in existence for the past decade. This was the first and the last to be heard about this party and its central committee. Shortly afterwards M. Mwamba-Mukanya was introduced to the Soviet public as no more than a Congolese public figure; his party had apparently vanished into thin air. It would be unwise to assume that such practices are designed merely to confuse the outside observer. There are good reasons to believe that Russian, Chinese and other Communists are at least as bewildered as everybody else by the frequent upheavals and the changing allegiances on the African scene. But it is hardly less difficult to arrive at a realistic appraisal