The rise and fall of socialism was one of the great developments of the twentieth century. The decline of communism was as protracted as its eventual collapse was sudden. Many dates can be inferred as the beginning of the end, and each date suggests one particular cause of the demise. From the outset, Ludwig von Mises [1920] declared that the economic principles of socialism could never work. Real Stalinism and its terror ended with the death of Josef Stalin in March 1953. In June 1953, a first major workers' protest against dictators ruling in their name occurred in Berlin. The Hungarian revolt of October 1956 was the first open challenge to both communism and the Soviet empire. The Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 suppressed thoughts that Soviet-type socialism could be reformed to attain a “human face.” Repeated Polish worker uprisings in 1956, 1970, 1976, and 1980 forewarned of socialism's collapse. The sixteen months in 1980–1 when the Solidarity trade union existed legally made evident that it was only a matter of time before communism would collapse and that this might first occur in Poland.

These many beginnings illustrate the inevitability, complexity, and tardiness of the collapse of the communist political and economic system. The economic and political problems were multiple, but the tenacity of communism was impressive. On the one hand, the strong centralized control kept communism alive longer than many had anticipated. On the other hand, the very petrification of communism made its collapse inevitable and ascertained that the collapse would be all the more profound (Bunce 1999b).