Peter Kenez's A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to the End examines not only political change but also social and cultural developments. The book identifies the social tensions and political inconsistencies that spurred radical change in the government of Russia, beginning at the turn of the century and culminating in the revolution of 1917. Kenez envisions that revolution as a crisis of authority that posed the question, "Who shall govern Russia?" This question was resolved with the creation of the Soviet Union. Kenez sees the 1920s, the years of the New Economic Policies, as crucial to any interpretation of the history of the Soviet Union. He points out the seeds of totalitarianism in the mixed economic and political system of those years, then traces the disintegration of that system, brought on by the confused policies enacted by officials who were ambivalent about the NEP. He shows that the crisis ended only when the system was completely dismantled and replaced by a new experiment: the Stalinist order. The leaders of the post-Stalin era attempted to determine a new direction for the Soviet Union. The 1960s to the 1980s were marked by a turn away from the dynamic "cult of personality" that characterized the earlier decades of the Soviet Union, toward collective leadership, conservatism, and corruption. The complacency and demoralization of those decades presage the disintegration of the Soviet Union under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev.