ABSTRACT
Western scholars were in a position to foresee communism’s Gotterdammerung and grasp the Red Holocaust’s immensity by 1979, when communist economic performance began to visibly decline, and the Vietnamese vanquished Pol Pot, but few did. Instead, most expected communism variously to economically excel, hold its own, or moderately underperform the west. Almost no one predicted collapse, because statistical evidence of deep rot was concealed by a veil of state secrecy. On paper, communist economies were doing well enough.
