The “Autumn of the People” of 1989 was a dismal failure of the predictive power of political science. Any retrospective explanation of the fall of communism must not only account for the historical developments but must also identify those theoretical assumptions that prevented us from anticipating these developments. If we are so wise now, why were we not equally sage before?

As I learned recently, most terminal cancer patients die of pneumonia. Social science is not very good at sorting out underlying causes and precipitating conditions: witness the 50 years of controversies over the fall of Weimar. And the response to the question “why communism collapsed?” is not the same as to “why did it collapse in the autumn of 1989?” It is easier to explain why communism had to fall than why it did.

The theory of “totalitarianism” could not answer either question: it could not diagnose the cancer and hence the vulnerability to pneumonia.