During 1989, as Eastern Europe's communist regimes abdicated power in the face of popular coups, Daniel Nelson was asked by a journalist if such changes meant a career change for scholars of communist systems. He answered affirmatively: if such scholars had examined these regimes only as communist systems; yet, for scholars who had studied politics in the arena of Eastern Europe, he said, a full and challenging career lay ahead.

This speculation has since given way to certainty. Comparative communism as a subfield of political analysis passed away during 1989, while the comparative politics of Eastern Europe was rejuvenated.

The Birth and Death of Comparative Communism

Within a few years after Mikhail Gorbachev inaugurated changes that he could not control, practitioners of comparative communism were confronted with new conditions for their research and analysis. Notwithstanding the continuation of communist rule in China, Cuba, North Korea, and Southeast Asia, the subfield lost its raison d'etre. Most of the premises that had generated a subfield of comparative endeavors, no matter how rudimentary they may have sometimes been, became moot.

Comparative communism had come and gone. But, what had comparative communism sought to accomplish? How well did scholars and policy-analysts succeed? Was there any lasting contribution to political studies?

In the late 1940s when communist parties gained power in Eastern Europe, China, and North Korea, the impression was that a single form of totalitarian government had been imposed from Moscow. The “Soviet bloc” aggregated all states' and leaders' behavior within the image of rigid uniformity. Consequently, broadly comparative analyses and rigorous tests of hypotheses were unnecessary. Most scholarly attention appeared to be driven by Western foreign policy interest.