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Contributors consider why communist political systems in the USSR, Eastern Europe, China and the developing world could not be revamped so as to allow communist parties to retain political power within an environment of reform. Among the issues discussed are the unwillingness of communist parties to relinquish real political and economic control; the reemergence of virulent nationalism and its role in ensuring the disintegration of multinational states; postcommunist transition strategies, both political and economic and the degree of continuity of change between Soviet and post-Soviet foreign policies in Russia. These previously unpublished essays have in common most of their authors' participation - 35 years ago - in a year-long graduate seminar at Columbia University entitled ""The Communist Orbit"". The book is dedicated to one of their teachers, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the Polish-born former national security advisor of government who was one of the first to predict publicly, in 1988, the disintegration of the communist system.