The Soviet Union in the twenty-first century

The subject of this article is how historians and others have understood Soviet history since the demise of the Soviet Union. It is argued that, despite the opening of archives, changes in interpretation have been driven as much by external political and disciplinary developments as by greater availability of data. Important external considerations have been the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet regime in 1991. The main historical schools examined are the totalitarian (whose heyday was the 1950s); revisionist (1970s); and post-revisionist (1990s). Interpretations of the Soviet Union in the Russian media and popular opinion, ranging from condemnation of communism to nostalgia, are also discussed.