Reading the collected works of Alexander Dallin bears little distinction from reviewing the entire history of the Soviet Union. Few authors have written so widely and crossed so many disciplinary boundaries. Categories such as "historian" versus "political scientist" or expert on "domestic" versus "foreign" policy offer little analytic power in describing Alexander Dallin and his work. In the wake of the Soviet collapse, however, the perspective from which we approach this body of work has suddenly changed. Writing on the eve of the disintegration of the USSR, Alexander Dallin and Gail Lapidus wrote in their introduction to The Soviet System in Crisis that "The changes in Soviet politics and foreign policy precipitated by Gorbachev's leadership challenged the prevailing academic paradigms and the conventional wisdom regarding the Soviet system."