ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the proposition that when authoritarian systems collapse, they are apt to do so, under certain identifiable conditions, according to rather regular patterns. It is concerned with a comparison of processes leading to the present state of political chaos in the former Soviet Union, with similar processes in four parallel cases. These cases are: the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the Chinese Revolution of 1911, the overthrow of the Spanish Monarchy, and the collapse of the post-Titoist system in Yugoslavia 1989-91. The Lithuanian choice to elect as president a former music professor reflects one possible resolution of this dilemma: on the side of choosing political innocence over political experience. The economic deterioration of late tsarist Russia and of post-Titoist Yugoslavia are too well known to bear repeating. Political collapse generally presumes political decay, and political decay unfolds over decades.
