The transition from the modern to the contemporary is one in which the challenges to the historian are the most difficult, since we lack much of the empirical evidence necessary for a proper historical analysis that remains unavailable due to its sensitive connection to ongoing terrorist campaigns. We may well be concerned about the conclusions we may be approaching because we are still engaged in the enterprise as representatives of one side or another with interests in the competing currents involved. For decades of the twentieth century, the Cold War presented exactly such restrictions, and it is only in its aftermath that we can obtain the evidence to answer questions about which formerly we could provide little more than knowledgeable speculation. To take one example, we no longer have to rely on estimates made by Sovietologists about the structure of the USSR’s power elite by watching where they are positioned in relation to one another atop the Lenin Mausoleum during the annual Revolution Day celebrations; we now have access to previously unavailable records of party meetings, diplomatic cables, and secret security archives, which permits us to arrive at both new and more accurate findings. Now that the Cold War era has run its course, it appears that it can be moved out of the historical category of the contemporary and appropriately consigned to an expanded version of the period since the French Revolution that we have been referring to as the modern era.