Opening the Soviet System by George SorosReview by: John C. CampbellForeign Affairs, Vol. 70, No. 2 (Spring, 1991), p. 193Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20044779 .

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RECENT BOOKS 193

cosmetic and tactical but a real revolution, the end of the Leninist-Stalinist

system.

THE WEST AND THE SOVIET UNION. Edited by Gregory Flynn and Richard E. Greene. New York: St. Martin's (with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace), 1990, 266 pp. $39.95 (paper, $15.95).

Not the usual inquiry into how the West should respond to circum stances and policies in the Soviet Union, this is a studied endeavor to examine factors in the culture and politics of the principal Western nations,

mainly domestic factors, which condition or determine what their re

sponses will be. It is a careful study, with individual chapters done by seasoned authors?Karl Kaiser on Germany, Dominique Moisi on

France?and raises points of likely divergence that political leaders would do well to ponder. The book does not take account, unfortunately, of the events since 1989 that have brought about drastic change in the East-West balance.

PLURALISM AND SOCIAL CONFLICT: A SOCIAL ANALYSIS OF THE COMMUNIST WORLD. By Silviu Brucan. New York: Praeger,

1990, 216 pp. $35.00. The author's purpose is to show that social change, particularly under

the impact of the scientific-technological revolution, rendered invalid some of Marx's theories, changed the composition and relations of classes and created the need for democratic reform in the Soviet Union, eastern

Europe (still under communist regimes at the time of writing) and China. The argument is sound but the book is sketchy and a bit thin. Brucan, who had a role in the Romanian revolution of 1989, says very little about

developments in his own country.

OPENING THE SOVIET SYSTEM. By George Soros. London: Weiden feld & Nicolson, 1990, 163 pp. ?20.

George Soros, a highly successful financier born in Hungary, has a mission to help the cause of freedom and the transition from closed to open societies in eastern Europe. He devotes a large part of his book to a "theoretical framework" that is quite abstract, but in due course he brings his argument into the practical realm in describing his own activities in the educational foundations he now has flourishing in Hungary and elsewhere, in assessing the tasks facing the new leaders and in calling for large-scale and many-sided Western assistance if the transition is to be accomplished.

REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION IN EUROPE. By Ralf Dah rendorf. New York: Times Books, 1990, 144 pp. $17.95. FALLEN DOMINIONS, REVIVING POWERS: GERMANY, THE SLAVS, AND EUROPE'S UNFINISHED AGENDA. By George Liska.

Washington: Johns Hopkins Foreign Policy Institute/Prague: Czechoslovak Institute of International Relations, 1991, 63 pp. $7.50 (paper).

In an urbane and thoughtful essay Dahrendorf reflects on the hectic and

heady events of 1989 in eastern Europe and the rougher ride of 1990. It takes the form of a letter to a Polish friend who had asked some pointed and difficult questions about the future. Dahrendorf s thoughts, expressed

with clarity and a measure of modest uncertainty, draw on his own broad

knowledge of European affairs and his devotion to the ideas of individual

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