On rare occasions TIME devotes a special issue to a subject it feels is of major importance: the American Woman (1972) and the South (1976) are examples from the past decade. Last summer the magazine's editors decided that the Soviet Union should be the focus for such a single-topic edition. Because of its inherently secretive nature and historical suspicion of the West, the U.S.S.R. has long been a nation much talked about but little understood. Following the invasion of Afghanistan, the Olympic boycott and the ensuing collapse of U.S.-Soviet relations, a new cold war became a reality, and the need for American knowledge about Soviet society was more pressing than ever. Says World Editor John Elson, who was in charge of the project: "I hope readers get from this a sense of the extraordinary complexity of the Soviet Union. It's not a gray, faceless monolith but an enormously vital country, with eleven time zones, diverse races and nationalities, and more than 100 languages."

Reporting for the special issue began in late fall when Moscow Bureau Chief Bruce Nelan approached Soviet officials with a long list of people and places TIME wanted to visit. The Soviets were initially quite helpful, recalls Nelan, but after the invasion of Afghanistan and the Carter Administration's tough response, "we were told that we would get no assistance and that our reporters and photographers from the U.S. would not get visas." Diplomatic Correspondent Strobe Talbott, who has covered the Soviet Union for TIME and was the translator-editor of Nikita Khrushchev's memoirs, was in the U.S.S.R. when tensions began to mount. Says Talbott, who wrote this week's opening story and the appraisal of U.S.-Soviet relations: "It was like being out of doors without enough warm clothes on and watching the mercury drop another ten degrees before my very eyes."

Spring, however, brought a thaw in the official Soviet attitude toward the project. Managing Editor Ray Cave spent four days in Moscow speaking with top Soviet officials. Photographers Mark Meyer and David Burnett traveled thousands of miles across the country to take many of the issue's photographs. Reporter-Researcher John Kohan, who speaks fluent Russian and was making his fourth trip to the U.S.S.R., visited a psychiatric outpatient center, rode with an ambulance team, went behind the scenes at the old Moscow circus, spent a day at a tractor factory.

In the U.S., TIME correspondents interviewed more than 100 Soviet experts, and the magazine's writers, working in their usual departments, received nearly 1,000 pages of reporting from the field. Assistant Picture Editor Michele Stephenson and Researcher Julia Richer culled 50,000 photographs. Tom Bentkowski produced the issue's special design. For guidance in their Stakhanovite labors, the staff could turn to TIME Soviet Specialist Patricia Blake--who wrote the Books story on Russian fiction--and Seweryn Bialer, professor of political science at Columbia University, who served as consultant.

The result is a copy of TIME dedicated to one subject, but at the same time as diverse and stimulating as any other week's edition of the magazine. Sums up Talbott: "Our issue makes clear that there is plenty to criticize about the Soviet system. But it will also help TIME's readers better understand the Soviets, their problems and perspectives, and therefore fear and hate them less."

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