The contributors to this volume have undertaken an assessment of the Soviet Union as it enters the last decade of the 20th century. Organized to cover each major area of policy initiative (or response), the collection surveys the Gorbachev reform agenda and its successes and failures to date in various fields, including culture, economics, ideology, law, politics, federalism and the nationality problem, and foreign policy vis-a-vis the West, Eastern Europe and the Third World.

The Chinese are among Europe's oldest immigrant communities, and are now, in several countries, among the biggest and, economically, the most powerful, drawing increasing interest from other ethnic minorities, governments, and researchers. This volume opens up and delineates this new field of European overseas Chinese studies, reporting on pioneering research on the Chinese in Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain, and exploring the networks, self-organizations, and migration patterns that are the fabric of the Chinese community in Europe, together with the issues of identity, language, integration, and community building that Chinese throughout the continent face.