Raymond Aron's life and political reflection was coextensive with the totalitarian epoch that emerged with the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 and came to an end with the implosion of the Soviet Union in the years immediately following his death in 1983. He did a great deal to educate western public opinion about the nature of totalitarianism, but he did not live to see the final defeat of the regime based upon the ideological Lie. His was a posthumous victory.