By Whose Authority?

The death this August of Mikhail Gorbachev reminded many of the extraordinary collapse of the Soviet Union, which began when Estonia declared its sovereignty in November 1988. While most Sovietologists at the time regarded the Communist regime as senescent and corrupt, few had anticipated its complete demise. Then it all crumpled with remarkable speed. Gorbachev’s reforms, which the general secretary hoped would address deep political and economic weaknesses, had the unintended consequence of knocking the props out from under the party and the Soviet empire itself.

That empire had survived for seventy years, through famines, bloody purges, a world war, and the Cold War. This longevity may seem more remarkable than the U.S.S.R.’s eventual fall, but as Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way argue in Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism, it was no accident. Such durability is a common characteristic of “radical revolutionary...