This four-volume work analyzes the stability problems in the Soviet system. Volume 1 contains the conflicting views of scholars from America, Europe, and Australia, all of whom predict changes that they believe will soon shape the Soviet future. The interrelated topics of economics and society are discussed in volume 2. Economic difficulties in the USSR are always problems of political power. Gorbachev's economic reforms, if successful, could lead to the creation of a society that is self-sufficient in many respects. That, in turn, would reduce the extent of the state and the power of its apparatus and would undermine Soviet leaders' economic decision making power, on which the political system rests. The ideological and cultural crisis is perhaps the most fundamental and fateful one facing the USSR today. Volume 3--devoted to the many aspects of this crisis--deals with the issues of multinationalism and predicts the collapse of the Soviet system in Russia as unavoidable. Volume 4 consists of 19 analyses of the Soviet future by Sovietologists.