The economic and political situation of a society attempting to be re-born is the subject of this work. With a chronological perspective in mind, Mandel describes the nature of the crisis that led to a regime-initiated perestroika.
David Mandel teaches political science at the University of Quebec, Montreal. He is co-founder of the School for Worker Democracy, which conducts rank-and-file labour education in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, and has written extensively on labour, past and present, in the region. He is active in the socialist and trade-union movements in Canada.