This book represents the fruit of six years of work with the research project "Social Change in Yugoslavia at the Crossroads of Two Centuries" at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory of the University of Belgrade. The greatest social change of all, however, came unexpectedly in the course of this work in the form of the tragic destruction of the Yugoslav state. Professor Svetozar Stojanovic emphasizes the causes of the implosion of communism as well as the obstacles to a postcommunist transition to democracy and a free-market economy. He examines in detail the structural weaknesses of communism, the victorious "capitalist encirclement," the ideological decay of communism and its loss of legitimacy, the Gorbachev and Yeltsin factors, and postcommunism's mix of communism, precommunism, democracy, capitalism, and nationalism.