It was more than evident last year that the ideology of the Brezhnev period—that coherent world view, that set of concepts that structured Soviet reality—was on its last legs. Significantly, that particular ideology is now quite dead. It is no longer on its last legs; it is no longer dying; it has been eliminated from political discourse within the Soviet Union. One may go so far as to say that Marxism-Leninism is virtually absent from Soviet discourse as well. One example is this year's May Day slogans. They could have been found at any peace demonstration in the United States. They have nothing to do with that which we knew as communism in the Soviet Union.