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⁴ Kirkpatrick, Jeane J., The Withering Away of the Totalitarian State ... And Other (Washington, D.C.:AEI Press, 1990Google Scholar). A decade earlier Kirkpatrick had articulated a variant of Arendt's thesis, insisting that the communist system is incapable of self-propelled evolution. See Kirkpatrick, , “Dictatorships and Double Standards,” Commentary, November 1979, pp. 34–45Google Scholar.

⁵ Graubard, , “Preface to the Issue ‘Eastern Europe . . . Central Europe . . . Europe,’ “ Daedalus 119 (Winter 1990), viGoogle Scholar.

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⁷ Naisbitt, , Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives (New York:Warner Books, 1982Google Scholar). The months following the East European Revolution saw the appearance of Naisbitt, John and Aburdene, Patricia, Megatrends 2000: Ten New Directions for the 1990s (New York:William Morrow, 1990Google Scholar). This sequel characterizes the East European developments of the late 1980s as an unforeseen “political earthquake” and then predicts that the 1990s will witness the further erosion of communism (chap. 3).

⁸ Economist, November 18, 1989, p. 13.

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⁵¹ Timothy Garton Ash, “Eastern Europe: The Year of Truth,” New York Review of Books, February 15, 1990, p. 18; emphasis in original.

⁵² Wierzbicki (fn. 45), 206–7.

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⁶⁰ For a fuller argument on how preference falsification distorts public discourse and how, in turn, this distortion warps the evolution of people's private preferences, see Kuran, Timur, “The Role of Deception in Political Competition,” in Breton, Albert et al., eds., The Compel-itive State (Boston:Kluwer-Nijhoff, 1990), 71–95Google Scholar.

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⁶⁴ Economist, July 18, 1987, p. 45.

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⁷³ This account draws on Ash (fn. 19); Anderson (fn. 26); and the New York Times reports compiled in Gwertzman and Kaufman (fn. 1), 158–60, 166–84, 216–22.

⁷⁴ New York, Times, August 18, 1989, p. 1.

⁷⁵ Ibid., October 8, 1989, p. 1. For a fuller account of the transformation, see Abel (fn. 14), chap. 2.

⁷⁶ New York Times, October 26, 1989, p. 1.

⁷⁷ Ibid., November 16, 1989, p. 1.

⁷⁸ For an eyewitness account of these events, see Timothy Garton Ash, “The Revolution of the Magic Lantern,” New Yor\ Review ofBooks, January 18, 1990,42–51. See also Abel (fn. 14), chap. 3.

⁷⁹ Economist, December 2, 1989, p. 55.

⁸⁰ For a demonstration, see Kuran (fn. 31).

⁸¹ The pace of events was undoubtedly a key factor also in the failure of conservative groups in the Soviet Union to block Eastern Europe's liberation. Had events proceeded more slowly, they might have had time to oust Gorbachev and order the Red Army into action.

⁸² Ash (fn. 51).

⁸³ “Czechoslovakia: The Velvet Revolution,” Uncaptive Minds 3 (January-February 1990), 11.

⁸⁴ For the New York Times reports of these events, see Gwertzman and Kaufman (fn. 1), 332–39.

⁸⁵ William M. Brinton, “Gorbachev and the Revolution of 1989–90,” in Brinton and Rinz-ler (fn. 11), 373.

⁸⁶ Tocqueville (fn. 36), 20.

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⁹¹ Further evidence concerning the element of surprise in the French, Russian, and Iranian revolutions may be found in Kuran (fn. 31), sees. 2, 6–7.

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