Perhaps the sharpest and most useful criti-cism of Soviet communism has come from Left socialist sources. The essays in this collection are unified by an abiding faith in the value of social change and political revolution, as well as a shared belief that the Soviet Union has fallen drastically short of its own promissory notes delivered by the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. This volume, the first in a series published under the direction of New Politics magazine, takes up the intimacies of Soviet society-its legal practices, its party organization, its eco-nomic planning techniques-with a devastat-ing forthrightness that is not to be found in any other single source. The writings draw heavily from scholarly sources in Europe that provide perspectives toward Soviet so-ciety uncluttered by the usual ideological gambits found in many books published in this- country, and unbiased by a reliance on purely secondary sources. For all who areinterested in the Soviet communist regime yesterday, today and tomorrow, this bookwill be crucial.