The Future That Failed: Origins and Destinies of the Soviet Model (Social Futures) Book

The Future that Failed applies theoretical debates in modernity to an analysis of the Communist experience. The most influential theories of modernity have rarely been applied to the problems of Soviet-type societies, even though recent events have highlighted the lack of a conceptual framework for the interpretation of this history. Johann P. Arnason shows that the Soviet model, when examined through the register of a revised concept of totalitarianism, enacts a characteristic pattern of modernity. The author develops this argument through an analysis of the historical sources of the Soviet model, its institutional core, the differences between its original version and later variants (with particular reference to China and Eastern Europe), and the combination of structural and historical factors which brought about its terminal crisis.Read More