Stephen Hanson points out that there is little to no agreement among contemporary scholars concerning either the predictability of the Soviet collapse or its underlying causes; between the untenable determinism Cohen rightly attacks and Cohen’s own extreme “possibilism” are many quite sensible intermediate positions. Once this is recognized, the real question becomes at what point, exactly, were Gorbachev’s reforms of the Soviet system likely to lead to change of the system itself? But to answer that question requires both a more precise, contextual definition of “reform” and a more holistic understanding of the Soviet “system” than Cohen provides here.
