Todd attracted attention in 1976 when, aged 25, he predicted the fall of the Soviet Union, based on indicators such as increasing infant-mortality rates. In the late 1970s Todd was widely pronounced "anti-communist", just as, following the publication of After the Empire, he has been attacked as "anti-American". He challenges these labels and describes himself as a historian and anthropologist first; and it was his concern as a historian, rather than political passion, that motivated him to write After the Empire.