The disintegration of the Soviet Union as a political entity has already begun. As an economic entity it is still intact. The following article examines the advantages and disadvantages facing the republics if they choose to break away completely.

Seventy years after the Bolshevik Revolution the Soviet Union is to embark on a new economic path which, according to Mikhail Gorbachev, will again call for revolutionary measures. What form will these measures take? What obstacles stand in the way of the planned reforms? What are their chances...

Since the beginning of detente in the sixties the United States' economic policy toward the Soviet Union has steered a zig-zag course. The latest spectacular step was President Reagan's lift - apparently without an adequate quid pro quo - of the embargo on grain and phosphates imposed by his...

The gas-pipeline deal planned between the Soviet Union and several Western European countries has met with objections from the US government, which fears that Western Europe could be politically blackmailed as a result of its increasing dependence on energy supplies from the USSR. Are these...