As the Soviet Union weakened, leading to its dissolution in 1991, Communism as a major global geopolitical factor also faded. As Gerald Segal writing for the "International Affairs" put it in 1990, the Yearbook while still a "reliable" and "essential" reference work, with all the changes in the Communist world, including "the breaching of the Berlin Wall and the coming of political pluralism to most of Eastern Europe", it was becoming a repository of "esoteric history"