ABSTRACT
The breakup of the Communist-run system taking place right now in Eastern Europe and the disintegrated Soviet Union is such a rare occurrence. The original design of the communist system indicates that its primary purpose was to facilitate a change in the world power distribution. The state-run system of communism was expected by its founder not only to help peripheral states—such as Russia before the Bolshevik Revolution—acquire the status of frontier, capitalist states but also to provide a design on which the whole structure of the world could be patterned. The totalitarian theorem has been challenged by the modernization school, which argues that to cope with the complex needs of their societies, the Communist leaders will replace the charismatic cast with a professional elite. The ideological base was also damaged by the fact that so little development of the original ideas was allowed under communist rule.
