n just five years, much to the aston-
ishment of professional Sovietolo-
gists, the Soviet Union has gone
from being the world's most men-
acing superpower to a weak ag-

glomeration of states uncertain of its very future. Why were most Moscow-- watchers so ill-prepared for this dramatic transformation? The fault lies partly in what may be called their "Copernican" view of the Soviet Union, a view which has dominated the field since the 1960s. Ac- cording to Copernican Sovietology, al...