This book reproduces the text of lectures concerning the rise and fall of communism delivered in Oslo in 1993 on the invitation of the Norwegian Nobel Institute. Through these lectures, Richard Pipes seeks to explain in broad historical and philosophical terms why communism initially triumphed in Russia, and why it ultimately failed. Rather than stress, as is common in the existing literature, the political and economic causes of the collapse of communism in the USSR and Eastern Europe, the author employs anthropological categories to show why this outcome was inevitable even if its timing could not be foreseen. The concluding part of the book isolates elements common to communism and contemporary liberalism in sounding a warning about the future of the West.