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Was the collapse of the Soviet Union inevitable? Could Mikhail Gorbachev have managed a transition to market democracy if he had made better economic and political choices? Or was authoritarian modernization after the model of Deng Xiaoping’s China a viable alternative for the USSR? Chris Miller offers a fresh approach to these questions in his fine short monograph. Ultimately, he argues that the collapse was, indeed, inevitable. Gorbachev’s hands were tied by powerful interest groups, which controlled the Communist Party and had a structural interest in the economic status quo.

Along the way, Miller presents new information about economic policy-making in the 1980s. In particular, he demonstrates the extent to which Soviet reformers followed the early stages of Chinese economic reform, seeing in Chinese innovations a potential way forward for their own country. Influential China watchers, notably Fedor …