In Volume 3 I sought to explain the Bolshevik Revolution. Here I examine the fall of the state socialism built by that revolution, and its replacement by versions of capitalism and democracy. The Fall was a world-changing event. Together with the economic reforms of the Chinese Communist Party (analyzed in the next chapter) it ensured the end of the cold war, the abandonment of state socialism, and the global triumph of capitalism over the last remaining alternative segment of the world economy. Explaining the Fall is of obvious sociological importance. For more than sixty years state socialism had been held together by Soviet power. Once it collapsed, so almost everywhere did the desire for world revolution. Marxist ideals for a wholly better society were largely finished, only Marxism as a pessimistic analysis of capitalism remained useful.

The Fall differed from the Bolshevik Revolution. It began from the top down as attempts at reform by the communist party failed and generated crisis. The usual term for this is a revolution from above, but was it a revolution at all? It contained relatively little turbulence coming from below, few mass demonstrations, with the big exception of Central Europe, and relatively little violence, except in Romania and between certain ethnic groups. So this chapter gives a more elite-centered explanation, the inverse of what I gave in earlier chapters. The Fall was threefold – the end of state socialism, the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and the end of Soviet empire abroad. The subsequent transitions were twofold, toward capitalism and toward democracy. I discuss all these.