THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE SOVIET-UNION

In 1990 the Soviet Union began moving into a phase of accelerated change. So far the effects have been, on the one hand, democratic-liberal structural changes in Russia and, on the other hand, signs of a dissolution of the cohesion of the union. The doyen of West German research on Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, Boris Meissner, who has constantly kept abreast of developments in the Soviet Union as emeritus professor at the University of Cologne, outlines this situation in the following article.