ABSTRACT
My colleagues and I have been working on this book for some two years, and in all candor we could not have predicted that it would prove to be such a challenging enterprise. It has been difficult not only in the technical sense: choosing the articles, selecting the quotations, writing the comments, translating the entire work, editing and reediting it, adding new materials, using overseas mails and FAXes, holding working sessions in Moscow, Berkeley, and Stanford. The most difficult, almost impossible, part of the job was to keep up with the incessant flow of events, with the interminable changes, the ups and downs of current Soviet life, the ebb and flow in the public mood.
