Twenty years ago the Berlin Wall fell, marking the col-lapse of Soviet communism. The failure of the com-munist system was not merely economic and political;

it was a moral failure as well. Over time communism createda deep disillusionment and revulsion among those who livedunder it. The diminished sense of legitimacy of the ruling elitein the Soviet Union and Soviet bloc countries contributed tothe unraveling of those systems as well.

At the same time, there is a remarkable lack of moralconcern in the West with the atrocities committed undercommunist systems, including the tens of millions of peo-ple who perished as a result of communist policies. By con-trast there has been a great deal of impassioned condemna-tion of the outrages of Nazism. The most important reasonfor treating Nazism and communism differently has beenthe perception that communist crimes were unintended

consequences of the pursuit of lofty goals whereas the goalsof Nazism themselves were unmitigated evil.

Western intellectuals who had once idealized the SovietUnion have done little soul searching regarding the roots oftheir beliefs. The long association of idealism with animositytoward commerce and capitalism among Western intellectu-als has contributed to a reluctance to criticize a system osten-sibly established in opposition to the values they abhorred.

Public attitudes in former communist countries have beenconflicted because of the arguable complicity of many citizensin keeping the old system in power. A predominant attitudein Eastern Europe and Russia toward the former communistsystems has been a mixture of oblivion, denial, and repression.

Contemporary Western attitudes toward the fall of theSoviet system suggest that political beliefs endure when theyare widely shared and can satisfy important emotional needs.

the cato institute1000 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20001-5403

www.cato.orgPhone (202) 842-0200 Fax (202) 842-3490

N o v e m b e r 2 , 2 0 0 9 ● n o . 1 1

Reflections on Communism Twenty Years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall

by Paul Hollander

Paul Hollander is professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and an associate at the Davis Center for Russian andEurasian Studies of Harvard University. Born in Hungary, he escaped following the crushing of the 1956 Revolution by Soviet forces.

Executive Summary

Introduction

The 20th anniversary of the collapse ofSoviet communism in Eastern Europe is anappropriate time for stocktaking and for seek-ing to answer a number of questions associat-ed with this historic event, its aftermath, andits continued influence.1 In this paper, I willaddress the following questions:

•Why did Soviet communism collapse,and what were some of the consequencesof its collapse?•What have been the attitudinal respons-

es to the collapse in the former and sur-viving communist countries?•How did the Western publics and elites

respond to the collapse, and how did ear-lier conceptions of communism and atti-tudes towards communist systems andideologies influence those responses?•Why do the ideals associated with com-

munist systems and movements remainattractive in many parts of the world andamong many groups and individualsdespite the well-documented crimes ofcommunism and its enormous cost interms of human lives?

Two questions need to be dealt with at theoutset. Did communism as a whole collapse orjust Soviet communism—the latter referringto the Soviet Union and countries under itsdirect control in Eastern Europe (the so-calledSoviet bloc that was also designated by Sovietauthorities as the Socialist Commonwealth)?Or did communism collapse as a global phe-nomenon, including communist ideology inall its varieties? Answering those questionsrequires clarification of what is meant by“communist.”

Communist states referred to themselvesnot as “communist,” but rather “socialist.”“Communism” was the long-term objective tobe attained in the distant, unspecified future, atthe pinnacle of historical evolution. Commu-nist society, as envisioned by Marx, was going tobe characterized by unprecedented material

abundance, the “withering away” of the state(that is to say, the state as an agent of coercion),and the disappearance of all inequalities andsocial problems (or social pathologies) such ascrime, alcoholism, and family disintegration.Most importantly, exploitation and alienationwere going to be eliminated.2 Under these con-ditions, the conflict between individual andsociety, or private and public interests, was alsosupposed to disappear.

As commonly used in the West, “commu-nist” refers to the political system of countriesthat designated themselves as “socialist.” How-ever those “socialist” states should not be con-fused with social-democratic countries such asthose in Scandinavia. The countries discussedin this paper were dominated by parties thatusually (but not invariably) called themselves“communist.” Notwithstanding differences insize, population, history, culture, levels of in-dustrialization, and urbanization, they had incommon the following attributes:

•The doctrine of Marxism-Leninism (usu-ally interpreted by the supreme leader) asthe source of legitimacy and supposedguide to all of the regime’s policies.• A one-party system often led by a deified

supreme leader; these parties claimed vir-tual infallibility and universal support (asexpressed in the alleged 99 percent of thevotes they regularly received in electionsthat offered no other choice).• The monopolistic control of the econo-

my and media of mass communications.•A large, highly differentiated and special-

ized police force that was dedicated tocombating “political crimes” and was in-strumental in keeping the party in power.• An ostensible commitment to develop a

new, superior human being.

Some of those states were also totalitari-an—at least during certain periods, such as theSoviet Union under Stalin, China under MaoTse-tung, Cambodia under Pol Pot, and Cubaunder Fidel Castro. Totalitarian states unlikeother repressive, authoritarian systems, devel-oped unusually efficient and ambitious meth-

2

The failure of the communist system was not

merely economicand political; it

was a moral failure as well.

ods of social control and intimidation andsought to politicize most spheres of life. In thetotalitarian society, the party/state reservedthe right to interfere in aspects of life that usedto be matters of indifference for other author-itarian rulers (i.e., the family, sexual morality,recreation, sports, travel, etc.). These totalitari-an systems controlled both the means of pro-duction and mass communication. Totalitar-ian societies were also defined by their far-reaching goals of social, economic, and cultur-al transformation and by their attemptedtransformation of human nature that was toculminate in the rise of the new socialist orcommunist man.3

It remains debatable whether or not thecollapse here discussed should be consideredthat of Soviet communism or more generallyof communism—including its ideologicalunderpinnings. It is indisputable, however,that in 1991 the Soviet Union fell apart. It isalso indisputable that between 1989 and 1991,communist systems in Eastern Europe im-ploded. Those Eastern European regimes col-lapsed when it became clear that the SovietUnion under Mikhail Gorbachev would notkeep them in power by Soviet military force asit had done in 1953 in East Germany, in 1956in Hungary, and in 1968 in Czechoslovakia.

The collapse of Soviet communism alsohelped to hasten the end of the communistsystems in Ethiopia and Nicaragua and weak-ened communist movements in other parts ofthe world. It has also stimulated the change ofeconomic policies in some of the survivingcommunist states, especially China and Viet-nam. Economic policies in Cuba and NorthKorea, however, remain largely unchanged.

Why Did SovietCommunism Collapse, andwith What Consequences?It is important to note that the collapse,

and especially its timing, was largely unfore-seen both inside the communist countriesand in the Western world.4 This lack of antic-ipation was related to the prevailing percep-

tions and misperceptions of communist sys-tems in general and the Soviet Union in par-ticular.5

There was no single, universal cause of theend of communism in each of the Iron Curtaincountries, but the weakening and disintegra-tion of the Soviet Union was a major contribu-tor to the collapse of communism in EasternEurope. Insofar as the popular rejection ofthose systems was among the causes of theircollapse, a major component of that rejectionwas nationalistic resentment over Soviet politi-cal and cultural domination. Popular disen-chantment with communist systems was fargreater in Eastern Europe (where communistinstitutions and policies were externallyimposed) than in the Soviet Union itself, wherea resigned acceptance of communism by thepopulace was more typical.

The collapse was unanticipated largelybecause the Soviet Union succeeded over longperiods of time to project an image of strengthand staying power.6 Some Western observersattributed this apparent stability to the agen-cies of control and coercion, others to thecapacity of the communist system to meet thebasic needs of the population. For example,Alexander Dallin of Stanford University wrote,“What we are really puzzling over is how athoroughly controlled, tightly disciplined andheavily indoctrinated system as the SovietUnion managed to fall apart, unravel so easilyand completely.”7

Critics of communist systems tended tobelieve that an unpopular, inefficient, andrepressive system could survive indefinitelygiven the determination of the rulers to stay inpower, and given the means at their disposalto stifle dissent, crush opposition, keep levelsof intimidation at a constant and high level,and hold popular expectations low. Some ofthe critics also believed that those systems suc-ceeded in indoctrinating the population—atleast to the extent that the population was nolonger capable of entertaining alternatives tothe existing and seemingly deeply entrenchedsystem, and was thus reduced to passivity.8

Those in the West who were sympathetic insome measure to the Soviet system did not

3

There is aremarkable lackof moral concernin the West withthe atrocitiescommitted undercommunist systems.

think that it would collapse either. Commu-nist sympathizers considered communistregimes stable not because of their power ofcoercion, but because, in their opinion, com-munist countries were modernizing states thatmet, by and large, the needs of their popula-tions and therefore enjoyed widespread popu-lar legitimacy. In particular, Stephen F. Cohenof New York University believed that there wasmuch evidence (including opinion surveys)that showed that even during the years of glas-nost and perestroika “large majorities of Sovietcitizens . . . continued to oppose free-marketcapitalism and to support fundamental eco-nomic-social features of the Soviet system—among them, public ownership of large-scaleeconomic assets, a state-regulated market,guaranteed employment, controlled consumerprices . . . and free education and health care.”But he has also written that “a majority ofRussians . . . regretted the end of the SovietUnion not because they pined for ‘Commu-nism’ but because they lost a familiar state andsecure way of life.”9

Some Explanations of the UnravelingNumerous explanations have been pro-

posed in retrospect to account for the unravel-ing of the Soviet Union. The most popular onehas been economic stagnation combined withGorbachev’s policy of allowing more freeexpression, or glasnost. As the argument goes,the Soviet system faced serious, chronic eco-nomic problems throughout its existence,ranging from the famines of the late 1920sand early 1930s to the persistent shortages ofconsumer goods and housing. Those difficul-ties, however, did not endanger the survival ofthe system until, beginning in the mid 1980s,increased free expression made them subjectto public discussion and the discontent theygenerated became more openly shared. Glas-nost was probably the single most importantcontributor to the collapse. It made it possiblefor ordinary people to learn what was wrongwith the system and to compare their own per-sonal dissatisfaction with that of others—mak-ing everyone realize that their grievances werefar from isolated.

The new permissiveness that glasnost ush-ered in came about because of the decliningideological convictions of the ruling elite andits diminished sense of legitimacy and politicalwill, including the will to repress dissent andany criticism of the authorities. At the sametime, Gorbachev and his associates believedthat greater openness in confronting thedefects of the system would reinvigorate ratherthan discredit it. Most consequentially, glas-nost made it possible for the general public toobserve and ponder the abyss between the the-ory and practice of communism, between offi-cial ideals and daily realities, between thepromises of the authorities and the multiplefailures regarding their fulfillment.

Glasnost delegitimized the Soviet systemby allowing the population to learn about themany defects and crimes of Soviet commu-nism, including forced collectivization, fam-ines, the millions who perished under Stalin,the show trials, the specifics of life in theGulag, the mismanagement of the economy,the decline of public health, the grotesquecult of Stalin, and the privileges of the Sovietpolitical elites, the “nomenklatura.”10 Glas-nost also enabled the Soviet public to learnmore about life in the West, thereby intensi-fying relative deprivation—that is to say, thesense of deprivation based not only on objec-tive realities (such as the shortages of hous-ing and consumer goods) but also on com-parison between their lives and those ofwesterners.

But what accounts for the rise of glasnost?It may best be explained by the mindset ofGorbachev and his colleagues who were farless rigid and doctrinaire than their predeces-sors; their ideological certainties had beenshaken and weakened. As a result they did notexercise power as ruthlessly as would havebeen required to fend off challenges to theirrule. The rise of Gorbachev reflected genera-tional change. He and his associates no longerpossessed the self-assurance and the politicalwill that allowed former Soviet leaders to pre-side—untroubled—over a wasteful and ineffi-cient economy, to enjoy politically determinedprivileges without compunction, and to crush

4

Western intellectuals

who had once idealized theSoviet Union

have done littlesoul searching.

dissent with a clear conscience. This was themajor proposition of my 1999 book, PoliticalWill and Personal Belief.

The roots of the doubts shared by this newgeneration of Soviet leaders probably reachback to the historic speech of Nikita Khrush-chev at the 20th Congress of the CommunistParty of the Soviet Union in 1956. In thatspeech, Khrushchev revealed many detailsabout Stalin’s reign of terror and the intoler-ant, cruel personality that was in striking con-trast to Stalin’s official depiction. Those shock-ing and unexpected revelations became thebasis of the gradual delegitimization and ques-tioning of the whole Soviet system among themembers of the party elite, which included,prominently, Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, aswell as politburo members Alexander Yakovlevand Eduard Shevardnadze, and historianDmitri Volkogonov.

The more proximate causes of the collapsemay be summarized as follows:

• The massive inefficiency that was alwaysan intrinsic part of the system of centralplanning. The failure of communism tomeet the material needs of the populacebecame more obvious over time. Short-ages of even the most basic foodstuffsand consumer goods were chronic andubiquitous throughout the communistbloc, especially the Soviet Union. • The costly Soviet intervention and de-

feat in Afghanistan (1979–1988), whichdrained the economy and illustrated thelimits of Soviet imperial power. •The arms race that intensified under U.S.

president Ronald Reagan in the 1980s,which imposed another great burden onthe economy and further undermined thestandard of living, increasing popular dis-content. •The intensifying unrest and uprisings in

Eastern Europe. Although repeatedly sup-pressed, the uprisings made it clear thatthe alleged beneficiaries of the Soviet ruledid not appreciate the imposition of theSoviet model. Thus the deteriorating situ-ation in Eastern Europe contributed to

the questioning of communism in theSoviet Union itself.

Discontent was nothing new over thedecades of Soviet control. What was new wasthe greatly diminished public willingness totolerate the failures of the system and thegreater freedom to express discontent andfrustration. There was discontent with thelow standard of living, the stifling bureaucra-tization of life, the privileges and corruptionof the nomenklatura, the waste of resourceson foreign interventions and allies, and thelimitations of personal freedom (foreign trav-el in particular). There was also smolderingethnic discontent in many parts of the SovietUnion that was contained as long as the cen-tral authorities exercised power without hesi-tation.

The Divergence between Theory andPractice

Richard Pipes of Harvard University hasargued that in addition to these proximatecauses, the fundamental cause of the collapse“was the utopian nature of its [the regime’s]objectives.” That is to say, the Soviet systemfrom its earliest days pursued goals that wereboth unrealizable and unpopular, includingthe attempted creation of “the new socialistman.”11 Those utopian efforts demanded awaste of resources, vast amounts of coercionand fraudulent political propaganda. MartinMalia of the University of California at Berke-ley made a similar point: “Of all the reasons forthe collapse of communism, the most basic isthat it was an intrinsically nonviable, indeedimpossible project from the beginning. How-ever important in its genesis were the heritageof Russian backwardness and authoritarian-ism, or the personal ruthlessness of Lenin andStalin, it is Marxism that was the decisive fac-tor . . . making communism the historicallyunique phenomenon it was. And the perversegenius of Marxism is to present an unattain-able utopia as an infallibly scientific enter-prise.”12

These Western assessments of the nature ofcommunism—utopian or otherwise—have great

5

Glasnost wasprobably the single mostimportant contributor tothe collapse.

bearing on the disputes and explanationsregarding the collapse of the Soviet Union.Thus, one set of the responses to the collapsewas shaped by the belief that it occurredbecause, as Malia and Pipes argued, the systemsought to achieve utopian goals inspired byMarxism. In other words, the collapse occurredbecause theory and practice converged (i.e.,Marxist theory compelled communist systemsto pursue unattainable utopian goals). Thetheoretical foundation or blueprint itself wasflawed, not viable, as Malia put it. MilovanDjilas, the Yugoslav communist politician wholater became a critic of communist totalitari-anism, also believed that “the [communist]idea itself contained the seeds of its own inglo-rious, future collapse. . . . Such visions mayencourage us to sacrifice . . . but they are alsoopiates to the soul. . . . The idea dried up in pro-portion as the reality legitimized by it grewstronger.”13

Igor Kon, a Russian social scientist, empha-sized the psychological dimensions of the pop-ular dissatisfaction. He wrote: “Among thecauses contributing to the demise of the Sovietempire one has to count the psychological cri-sis that gripped Soviet society in the early 1970sand wore it down through the 1980s. Apathy,cynicism and alcoholism had as much to dowith the collapse . . . as falling prices on worldoil markets and corruption among Soviet offi-cials. . . . Perestroika failed to deliver on itspromise . . . because its architect . . . underesti-mated the depth of the anger that envelopedSoviet society after its cherished myths wereexposed.”14

By contrast, many (mostly Western) com-mentators argued that the system had little ornothing to do with Marxism, and it collapsedbecause theory and practice diverged as the rul-ing elite made no serious attempt to realize thehumane and liberating ideals of Marxism.These two seemingly conflicting approachesmay in part be reconciled by proposing thatthere was a fundamental discrepancy betweenthe promises and ideals embedded in the Marx-ist theory and the results of their attemptedrealization, but not between the theory and thepolicies these ideals inspired and legitimated.

The reasons leading to the collapse includ-ed both sets of factors: some of the ideals ortheoretical propositions of Marxism wereclearly adopted and zealously pursued butthey had adverse, unintended consequences.For example the collectivization of agricultureretarded food production, and state con-trolled industrialization created a huge, ineffi-cient bureaucracy, diminished incentives ofthe workers, and contributed greatly to theconcentration of political power.

Marx and Lenin (initially) believed thatcommunist ideals would command broadpopular support and therefore little violence orcoercion will be required to implement them.They also believed that all forms of humanmisbehavior will “wither away” after the prole-tarian revolution and the seizure of the meansof production. As Leszek Kolakowski put it,“Marx seems to have imagined that once capi-talists were done away with the whole worldcould become a kind of Athenian agora: onehad only to forbid private ownership of mach-ines or land and, as if by magic, human beingswould cease to be selfish and their interestswould coincide in perfect harmony.”15

There were further connections betweenMarxist theory and Soviet-communist prac-tice. Communist leaders shared Marx’s con-viction that capitalism and the profit motivewere the sources of all evil. They also believedthat religion was a primitive and debilitatingsuperstition and a tool of the ruling classesthat had to be suppressed. Marx and the lead-ers of actually existing communist systemsalso shared a contempt for peasants and theirtraditions. Marx’s doctrine of class struggletoo was eagerly embraced by communistleaders and helped to legitimize their ruth-lessness and intolerance for any oppositionor dissent. Neither Marx nor 20th-centurycommunist leaders were concerned with thedangers of bureaucratization and the con-centration of political power.

The all-too-visible gaps between theoryand practice (or theory and its attempted real-ization) were crucial in delegitimizing the sys-tem and in creating massive, entrenched pop-ular discontent. As Alexander Wat, a Polish

6

The Soviet systemfrom its earliest

days pursuedgoals that were

both unrealizableand unpopular.

writer, noted, “The loss of freedom, tyranny,abuse, hunger would all have been easier tobear if not for the compulsion to call themfreedom, justice, the good of the people.”16

Or, as Hungarian writers Thomas Aczel andTibor Meray put it, “Most intolerable was thesimulation of virtue, the endless proclama-tion of good intentions: everything was tak-ing place on behalf of ‘the people.’ . . . Thewriters knew very well that there were greatsocial contradictions in Western capitalist sys-tems. . . . But in those capitalist societies atleast they did not insist that everything be-longed to the masses.”17

The ubiquitous political propaganda madea substantial contribution to popular discon-tent and cynicism since its repetitious asser-tions sharply and spectacularly contrastedwith the daily experience of the people.18

The disunity between theory and practicewas more apparent. The public ownership ofthe means of production did not make theeconomy more productive. The workersdeprived of autonomous trade unions hadless control over their wages and working con-ditions than their counterparts under capital-ism; they were often searched when exitingthe factories (to make sure they did not steal)and had little reason to consider themselvesmasters of their fate and owners of the meansof production. One-party rule was no moredemocratic than parliamentary democracy.The Communist Party was not composed ofthe most selfless and idealistic representativesof the working classes; the leaders of the partyand government proved quite vulnerable tocorruption. Communist prisons were nomore humane than those in capitalist coun-tries and they too failed to rehabilitate theinmates. The privileges of the nomenklaturacontradicted the ideals of social equality. Themasses did not readily accept that religionwas their opiate and that the persecution ofbelievers was just and served a useful purpose.In short, the causes of the collapse of Sovietcommunism could be found both in its ideo-logical roots and theoretical inspiration aswell as in the unintended consequences of thepractices and policies of the system.

Unlike most Western commentators, Ste-phen Cohen believed that the Soviet systemwas eminently reformable and that its collapsehad far less to do with structural factors thanwith the mistaken decisions and policies ofparticular leaders such as Gorbachev andYeltsin. It is those personal decisions that pro-vide, in Cohen’s view “the essential explana-tion of the end of the Soviet Union.” Accord-ing to him, “the opposing but symbiotic willof two extraordinary figures [Gorbachev andYeltsin] . . . led to the end of the Soviet Union.”The decisions and policies that proved to befatal to the Soviet state included Gorbachev’s“giving away immense personal power he hadinherited” as well as political decisions that“dismantled and undermined the old Sovieteconomic system without leaving time foranother to develop in its place.” Glasnost, inaddition to its consequences noted earlier“contributed to the economic crisis by loosen-ing central controls. . . . By 1990, Gorbachev’sreforms and other developments had removedor weakened the elements of Party-state com-mand and control that had defined the Sovieteconomy and made it workable . . . fordecades.” The “fateful” decisions of these twoleaders included Yeltsin’s hasty, arbitrary, andill-conceived decision, as Cohen sees it, to dis-mantle the Union of the Soviet SocialistRepublics. Cohen also believes that the eco-nomic shortages by themselves were not seri-ous—the problem was “primarily one of distri-bution.”19

While Cohen never had illusions about therepressive qualities of the Soviet system priorto the rise of Gorbachev, he has entertained formuch of his professional life questionablehopes about its humane and liberating poten-tial rooted in the original ideological inspira-tion personified by Nikolai Bukharin, whowas executed during Stalin’s purges.

In concluding this brief survey of the caus-es of the collapse of communism, it is impor-tant to stress once more that Soviet commu-nism was not merely or primarily an economicand political failure—it was a moral one aswell.20 The system’s legitimacy greatly dimin-ished (or completely disappeared) not only

7

Utopian effortsdemanded awaste ofresources, vastamounts of coercion, andfraudulent political propaganda.

because it malfunctioned economically andadministratively, but because of its notoriousmendacity, which created, over time, a wide-spread moral indignation and cynicismamong the population. Doubtless, the ideo-logical convictions and sense of legitimacy ofthis new generation of leaders was also under-mined by economic stagnation, but that stag-nation was not the only, or major source ofdoubt. For all the above reasons, the Sovietleaders were less capable than their predeces-sors of subordinating means to ends and keep-ing the communist system going.

Some Consequences of the Fall ofCommunism

One of the initial consequences of theSoviet Union’s disintegration was the growthor perpetuation of economic, social, anddemographic problems. Prominent amongthem were crime (especially organized crime)and ethnic conflict. There has also been adecline in the standard of living, public health,and population growth, and a rise in new andvery visible inequalities. The independence ofthe former Soviet republics created new rela-tionships between Russia and the politicallyindependent but economically still dependentsuccessor states. Their economic dependenceon Russia would be later used by PresidentVladimir Putin to reassert at least a measure ofcontrol over those former Soviet territories.

The integration of some of the formerSoviet bloc countries into the North AtlanticTreaty Organization and the European Unionwas another significant outcome of the col-lapse of the Soviet Union and the “SocialistCommonwealth.” That contributed to a mea-sure of political stability and progress in thosecountries but also resulted in massive resent-ment and apprehension in Russia. The reuni-fication of Germany was another major out-come of the collapse.

By and large, the process of political, cul-tural, and economic westernization has beenmore rapid and consistent in Czechoslovakiaand its successor states and in Hungary,Poland, Slovenia, and in the Baltic countries.In the Ukraine, Belarus, Albania, Bulgaria,

Romania, and Russia, the process of western-ization has been less successful.

In Eastern Europe, as in Russia, the newand weaker central authorities have had diffi-culty coping with resurgent social problems(crime, drugs, homelessness, caring for theold, ethnic tensions, etc.). The rise of newinequalities produced resentment and dissat-isfaction in Eastern Europe, where the privi-leges of the nomenklatura used to be careful-ly hidden from public scrutiny.

Political polarization in Eastern Europe hasbeen another consequence of the collapse.Democratization allowed for a free expressionof formerly suppressed political sentimentsand ideologies such as virulent nationalism,anti-Semitism, neo-Nazism and the revival ofold ethnic hatreds peculiar to the region. In theformer Czechoslovakia (split into the CzechRepublic and Slovakia), Hungary, and Roma-nia, popular hostility toward the gypsy popula-tion became freely expressed. In Hungary(which has the largest surviving Jewish popula-tion in Eastern Europe) anti-Semitism hasbecome overt in many parts of the populationand has even found expression in the massmedia.

Globally, the most obvious consequence ofthe collapse was the rise of the United States asthe only superpower21 and the replacement ofthe Cold War by a series of localized conflictsof diverse origins. The rise of global terrorismperpetuated by radical Islamic groups also fol-lowed the collapse, though the rise of terror-ism cannot be directly linked to the fall of theSoviet Union.

The collapse of the Soviet Union has encour-aged the United States to play a more active,interventionist role in world affairs—as ex-pressed by the Gulf War in 1991, the Iraq Warbeginning in 2003, and the removal from pow-er of the Taliban in Afghanistan beginning in2001. Those actions and policies also creatednew, unanticipated problems and contributedto a substantial increase of worldwide hostilitytoward the United States. The resurgent anti-Americanism and anti-capitalism divertedattention from the communist systems, bothextinct and surviving. As a result efforts to bet-

8

The workers had less controlover their wages

and working conditions than their

counterpartsunder capitalism.

ter understand the nature of communism andthe damage it inflicted on the world havediminished. More recently, anti-Americanismand anti-capitalism have found expression inthe rise to power of radical leftist political move-ments in Latin America, especially Venezuela,Bolivia, and Ecuador, as well in the electoral re-turn to power of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

Generally speaking, the collapse of the Sovi-et empire did not stimulate in the West or oth-er parts of the world a serious or lasting moralor philosophical reassessment of the nature ofcommunism comparable to the massive moralreflections stimulated by Nazism and its well-known evils. Nor has there been much of whatsome critics of the United States called “tri-umphalism,” although there were a handful ofoverly optimistic assertions about the supposed“end of history” (i.e., an end of serious, ideolog-ically based political conflict and of any seriousquestioning of liberal democracy).22

The fall of Soviet communism has beenused by many academic intellectuals to reaf-firm their critiques of the theories of totalitar-ianism, of the Cold War policies of the UnitedStates, and of the anti-communist dispositionin general rather than to probe the nature ofcommunism in the light of its collapse and thenew information that has become available.The collapse also reinvigorated “revisionism”in Soviet studies. The latter denied the applic-ability of the totalitarian model to the SovietUnion, shifted responsibility for the Cold Warto the United States, reduced the estimates ofthe victims of communism, and diminishedthe part that communist ideology and high-level decisionmakers played in mass mur-ders.23

The worldwide recession that started in2008 has further stimulated critiques of cap-italism, which in turn helped to neutralizecritical assessments of communist systems—extinct or surviving. There remains a dis-cernible continuity (further discussed below)in Western countries and among Westernintellectuals between longstanding (andlargely discredited) views of communist sys-tems and the responses to their collapse andaftermath.

Responses and Attitudestoward the Collapse inFormer and Surviving

Communist States

The response to the collapse in the formerSoviet bloc countries and the Soviet Union hasbeen determined largely by the gap between theexpectations raised by such momentouschange and the fulfillment of those expecta-tions. To be sure, the responses and attitudeshave not been static or uniform in those areas.Generally speaking, with the passage of time,the enthusiasm occasioned by the collapsedeclined as new problems emerged. A largeproportion of the population in those coun-tries expected more rapid and spectacularimprovements in their standard of living thanoccurred. At the same time, they did not expecttheir new, democratically elected governmentsto be tainted by corruption and petty infight-ing. The unseemly public expressions of com-petition for political power were unfamiliarand unwelcome. Similarly, they did not expectthe increase of a wide range of social problemsand the new forms of inequality.

There was also disenchantment amongintellectuals who had been at the forefront ofthe movement for change. Andras Bozoki, aHungarian political scientist, observed thatmany intellectuals who played a major part inthe largely peaceful transformation of Centraland Eastern European societies “found itincreasingly difficult to find a place in thenewly consolidating political systems.” Whilesome willingly became politicians, the majori-ty became disillusioned and were eitherpushed out or withdrew from political life. . . .The bureaucratic, routine politics . . . was unat-tractive to many intellectuals who had activelyparticipated in the transition. Some felt thatthe emerging system was not what they hadstruggled to create, their dream of a victoriouscivil society giving way to party elites with par-tial interests.”24

Thus, in many sectors of society, the initialeuphoria over the collapse gave way to a mix-ture of bewilderment, ambivalence, and cyni-

9

The privileges of the nomenklaturacontradicted theideals of socialequality.

cism, as well as some nostalgia for the old days.This nostalgia has been far more pronouncedamong the old and less educated than theyoung, the highly skilled, and well educated.As James Millar and Sharon Wolchik ofGeorge Washington University have written,“The belief and desire for an extensive systemof welfare entitlements . . . represents a signifi-cant legacy of Soviet-style communism.”25

In Hungary, the relatively permissive“goulash communism” of the Kadar regimehas been nostalgically recalled by those dis-turbed by the new inequalities and the dimin-ished social stability of the post-communistera. Many Hungarians also reacted negativelyto the new freedom of expression that allowedthe venting of irredentist, neo-Nazi, and anti-Semitic sentiments, and the establishment ofpolitical movements embodying those ex-treme attitudes.

In Russia, where the superpower statusand the associated nationalistic pride used tocompensate large segments of the popula-tion for their modest material circumstances,the loss of imperial-power status was widelyregretted. These Russians wanted “respect”—and the more so the more uncertain theywere whether or not their actual accomplish-ments merited the respect they demanded.The growth of public indifference in post-communist Russia toward former dissidentauthor Alexander Solzhenitsyn that followedhis return from the West in 1994 was anoth-er indication of the lack of interest in the pastand the sufferings and indignities associatedwith it. It was also an expression of the pub-lic indifference to the critiques of commu-nism that he personified.

Democratization initiated by Yeltsin washalted and reversed under his successor,Vladimir Putin. The latter’s popularity restedon rebuilding social order and stability,increasing economic growth, beginning torestore the political and military power ofRussia, and thereby satisfying the nationalisticlongings in parts of the population. The 2008military intervention in Georgia was the mostobvious attempt to reassert Russia’s militaryand political power over those areas that were

formerly part of the Soviet Union. Suspensionof oil and gas shipments to other formerSoviet republics was another attempt toreassert Russia’s influence over those areas.

The deterioration of political conditions inRussia has also been marked by the assassina-tions of numerous journalists and humanrights activists who were critical of the author-ities. Also significant and ominous was thepartial restoration of Stalin’s reputation.According to official statements, school texts,and new discussions of Soviet history, Stalin’salleged accomplishments overshadow his“excesses” and errors. The new official line onStalin received support from two sources. Theolder generation associated him with the oldglories of the Soviet Union and a seeminglyless corrupt, more stable and less confused erain Russian history. The second source of sup-port came from some younger people whoknew little about Stalin, but who adopted himas a symbol of their opposition to the newsocial realities, which they found alien andunaccommodating. The recent proposal byRussian president Dmitri Medvedev to set upa commission to oversee and rectify the teach-ing and research of Soviet-Russian history isyet another indication of the official determi-nation to burnish the historical record ofRussia to suit the resurgent nationalisticbeliefs and current government policies.

In Eastern Europe, and especially in themore developed and westernized countriessuch as the Czech Republic, Hungary, andPoland, democratization after 1989 has beenfar more successful. East Germany unitedwith West Germany and instantly acquired awell-established democratic institutionalframework. In the former Yugoslavia, whichwas not a part of the Soviet Bloc, instabilityand violent ethnic conflict erupted as it hadin parts of the former Soviet Union, wheresome of its former constituent republics orregions, such as Chechnya, sought indepen-dence or greater autonomy.

The predominant attitude in EasternEurope as well as Russia toward the formercommunist systems has been a mixture ofoblivion, denial, and repression. Few former

10

The collapse ofthe Soviet empiredid not stimulate

in the West a serious moral

reassessment ofthe nature ofcommunism.

communist officials were held responsiblefor violations of human rights. As MartinMalia noted, “throughout the former com-munist world . . . virtually none of its respon-sible officials has been put on trial or pun-ished.”26 Only in the Baltic countries weresome communist officials, such as formerKGB agents, tried and convicted for their par-ticipation in political repression or humanrights abuses.27 There were halting attemptsin Czechoslovakia to introduce what came tobe called “lustration” (exclusion from politi-cal participation for a period of time of thoseinvolved in gross human rights violationsunder the communist system).

Markus Wolf, the head of the foreign intelli-gence service of Stasi, the East German politicalpolice, was tried and convicted. On appeal, Wolfwas given a suspended sentence. A handful ofborder guards were also tried. Some were con-victed and served reduced prison terms. Noneof these half-hearted attempts had much incommon with the sweeping and thorough de-Nazification program that was introduced afterWorld War II in what became the FederalRepublic of Germany. The differences betweenthe treatment of Nazi and communist officialsare indicative of the longstanding reluctance topass comparable moral judgments over Nazismand communism (a matter that will be furtherdiscussed below).

For all of the above reasons, rather thanreassessing the past and seeking a better un-derstanding of the nature and the damageinflicted by the communist systems, publicattention in ex-communist countries came tofocus on the new political conflicts and eco-nomic problems, as well as on the new oppor-tunities for consumption, enrichment, andprivate pleasures.

Public attitudes about the past were alsoconflicted—especially in Russia and EastGermany—because of the arguable complicityof a considerable number of citizens in keep-ing the old system in power. Revelations of thewidespread penetration of private lives by theformer political police and the ubiquity ofinformers, including friends and family mem-bers, also created mixed public reactions. For

the most part, disgust blended with the desireto forget that shameful chapter in the historyof formerly communist countries. Thus, withthe exception of the Baltic states, both publicand elite opinion seemed to come to the con-clusion that domestic spying, as well as other,more serious crimes of the previous govern-ments, should not be investigated and prose-cuted—in order to avoid prolonged and acri-monious recriminations, and to preserve asemblance of national unity and social cohe-sion.

The intelligentsia too has been split in itsattitudes toward the past. A minority soughtbetter understanding and further research, asthose in Hungary who are associated with theInstitute of the 1956 Revolution. Othersbecame preoccupied with the new (or revived)political conflicts and divisions, and with pre-serving indigenous cultural traditions in theface of the onslaught of Western popular cul-ture.

The rise (or perhaps only the greater visibil-ity) of corruption has been another source ofdisillusionment with post-communism. Inboth Russia and Eastern Europe, members ofthe former party elite took advantage of priva-tization and came to possess or control largeparts of what used to be state property. Theythereby entered, at a stroke, the ranks of thenew rich. Other conventional forms of corrup-tion also persisted or increased—bribery, ex-change of favors, paying for supposedly freemedical services with tips to nurses and physi-cians.

The fluidity of political attitudes in EasternEurope has also been reflected in the swing ofthe pendulum between left and right parties inHungary, Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria.Communism has doubtless been discreditedin Eastern Europe, but many people greetedthe new, unfamiliar alternatives that emergedafter the collapse with reservations, ambiva-lence, or outright hostility.

In the more advanced countries of EasternEurope, the loss of interest in communismhas also been the result of their growing west-ernization and the experience of the newproblems that the process of westernization

11

The predominantattitude inEastern Europeas well as Russiatoward the former communist systems has beena mixture ofoblivion, denial,and repression.

entails. As Hungarian philosopher Gaspar M.Tamas put it, “Regime change was in the firstplace liberation, but secondly a new chapterin the ongoing crisis of modern society.”28

The collapse of Soviet communism in thesurviving communist states led to differentresponses. The rulers in Cuba and North Koreawere determined to avoid anything resemblingglasnost or perestroika that might have wettedpopular appetites and expectations, and threat-ened their monopoly on power. In China, theloosening of political controls after Mao’sdeath culminated in the Tiananmen Squaredemonstrations and massacre, which indicatedthat the political will of the Chinese leadershipdid not waver. While retaining the monopolyon political power, the Chinese communistregime introduced sweeping economic reformsthat legitimated the profit motive and led tohigh levels of economic growth. China is still apolice state, but it has ceased to be totalitarian.As a Chinese dissenter has written, the statesecurity remains “as restrictive as ever. . . . Like aspider in its web . . . the Security Bureau wasalways lying in wait for its prey.”29 It remains tobe seen how long the current (arguably precari-ous) coexistence of considerable economic free-dom and strict political controls will endure.

Western Responses tothe Collapse and

Their DeterminantsWestern responses to the collapse were in

large measure determined by the prior percep-tions of and attitudes toward communist sys-tems. Those critical of communism rejoiced atits fall but they were not necessarily in a betterposition to explain why it happened or why ithappened when it did. Sympathizers were atan even greater loss to explain and interpretthe collapse. The following discussion focuseson the responses in the United States. In allprobability, the discussion below is applicableto Western Europe as well.

After the initial euphoria, American publicopinion as a whole has remained largely indif-ferent to the collapse of communism and sub-

sequent developments. Americans—both hos-tile and sympathetic to communist systems—knew little about them. The policies and char-acteristics of communist states used to be, andhave remained, matters of indifference, exceptwhen the possibility of a conflict arose as dur-ing the cold war when the Soviet Union wasthe enemy. The mass media devoted limitedattention to the collapse, its aftermath, and tocommunist societies in general. New opportu-nities for learning more about communist sys-tems from field research or archival sourceshave not been fully utilized.30 Massive igno-rance persists among the public at large andeven among the better educated. Few collegesor universities offer courses about the formeror remaining communist systems, let alonetheir massive human rights violations.

Asymmetrical Reaction to Communismand Nazism

Public awareness of the large-scale atroci-ties and human rights violations in commu-nist states is minimal, especially in compari-son to awareness of the Holocaust andNazism.31 These differences are symbolized bythe contrast between the impressive and well-funded Holocaust Museum in Washington,D.C., and the absence of any correspondinginstitution devoted to the victims of commu-nism.32 It should also be noted that the physi-cal remnants of the Nazi killing machine havebeen recovered, preserved, and images of itseen all over the world. The Communistkilling fields have been for the most part inac-cessible and poorly known. Little remains ofthe “Gulag Archipelago” and its equivalents invarious former communist states.

Visual representations of those two sys-tems in the mass media have also been vastlydifferent. There have been few movies or tele-vision programs—either documentaries or fea-ture films—dealing with communist societiesor movements. By contrast there are, appro-priately enough, countless offerings depictingNazi Germany, Hitler, and the Holocaust.

During World War II, Hollywood actuallymade a number of pro-Soviet propagandafilms, glorifying various aspects of the Soviet

12

Few former communist

officials wereheld responsiblefor violations of

human rights.

regime. As a result of this discrepancy, negativestereotypes of Nazis and Nazism are familiarto American and Western audiences, whereascommunist systems, their representatives,policies, and massive human rights violationsremain (for the most part) abstractions.

The scholarly attention paid to the two sys-tems has also been divergent. Studies ofNazism and the Holocaust are far more nu-merous and widely known than correspond-ing research and writing about communistsystems. As Martin Malia noted, “Soviet socialprocesses claimed victims on a scale that hasnever aroused a scholarly curiosity at all pro-portionate to the magnitude of the disaster.”33

Another telling discrepancy between theattitudes toward Nazism and communism isthat few people have ever questioned the relia-bility or veracity of the information providedby surviving victims of Nazi persecutions—including surviving inmates of concentrationcamps and other refugees from Nazi Germanyor Nazi-dominated territories. By contrast, theveracity of defectors and refugees from com-munist countries has often been subject ofskepticism and even scorn, and deemed to bean unreliable source of information about theworkings of the communist systems.34

An additional and thought-provokingillustration of those divergent attitudes can befound in the commercial use of communistsymbols in advertising. We now have a lemon-ade soda, called “Leninade.” At HammerSickleStuff.com, you can buy “classy and novelpanties, undies, thongs and bras with the Sovi-et hammer and sickle logo.” Adidas used tooffer hats celebrating the People’s Republic ofChina, Castro’s Cuba, and the former SovietUnion. The last one came with the inscription,“Show your love of the former USSR duringtraining time.”35 There is also an overabun-dance of products bearing the images of CheGuevara (more about him below).

There are no Nazi symbols used in adver-tising. Evidently, Nazism is not considered alaughing matter by advertisers or marketingspecialists. Advertisers feel free to joke aboutcommunism and use its symbols to sell awide range of products. Communism, espe-

cially its Soviet variant, can perhaps be madefun of because of lingering (and partially cor-rect) notions of Soviet inefficiency, disorder,and backwardness. By contrast, perceptionsof Nazism entail stereotypes of cold and cal-culating German efficiency and orderliness.Those characteristics certainly marked theNazi machinery of repression and are apt togenerate impassioned moral indignation andjudgment.

We can readily summarize the principalfactors that determined the contrasting West-ern perceptions and moral assessments ofNazism and communist systems. They are asfollows:

• Easy access to far more abundant visualimages and evidence of Nazi wrongdo-ing and especially mass murders.• The different methods used in each sys-

tem to exterminate groups defined asundesirable.• The different official ideologies, beliefs,

and intentions that motivated the twosets of atrocities.

For all the above reasons, there remains adeep aversion in the West to postulating oracknowledging moral equivalence betweenNazism and communism. The most impor-tant reason for treating the two totalitarian sys-tems differently is the perception that commu-nist mass murders were byproducts andunintended consequences of the pursuit ofadmirable ends, whereas the Nazi campaignsof extermination were the goals in themselves.The Nazis single-mindedly (one might sayobsessively) pursued the extermination of aparticular group, the Jews, by shooting orgassing them. By contrast, the larger propor-tion of the victims of communism were notexecuted; they died in forced labor camps as aresult of harsh living conditions—illness, star-vation, over-work, cold, poor or nonexistentmedical services. Millions of inmates survivedcommunist camps and prisons, only tens ofthousands survived the Nazi concentrationcamps. It remains debatable what, if any, moraldistinctions should be attached to killing peo-

13

More recently, anti-Americanism andanti-capitalismhave foundexpression in the rise to power of radical leftistpolitical movements inLatin America.

ple in highly purposeful, technologicallyadvanced manner, as opposed to achievingtheir liquidation (in much higher numbers,over longer periods of time) by inhumane liv-ing and working conditions in detention.

There were other morally relevant differ-ences between the two systems. Communiststates were not fixated on destroying any par-ticular social or ethnic group or class of people.Those who were designated as politically unde-sirable (and their descendants) were not invari-ably and automatically sentenced to death. Itwas sometimes possible to escape such desig-nation and its consequences by demonstratingloyalty to the system or by being useful to it.Rehabilitation was a theoretical and some-times practical possibility, and, over time, poli-cies changed and a larger proportion of thosepreviously persecuted groups became tolerat-ed. By contrast, under Nazi rule, belonging toundesirable racial or ethnic categories was animmutable condition, which had lethal conse-quences. The Nazis saw the Jews as represent-ing unalterable, ineradicable evil that could notbe tamed or reeducated, but required destruc-tion. The Nazi designation of the enemy wasmuch narrower but far more deadly. In com-munist states, not only class origin, but a broadrange of social, cultural, demographic, andbehavioral attributes could qualify a person tobe designated as undesirable or suspect. Thecommunist definition and classification of theenemy fluctuated—nobody was immune tosuspicion. That fluctuation resulted in morevictims over time and a greater overall sense ofinsecurity for the citizens in communist coun-tries. Another important moral difference wasthat the communist authorities, unlike theNazis, did not execute children but placedthem in various institutions when their par-ents were incarcerated or executed.

In any event, the far greater number of vic-tims of communist systems appears to carryless moral weight than the Holocaust, becauseof the mechanized quality of the Nazi massmurders. Nazi Germany murdered six millionJews. To that number we might add severalmillion Soviet prisoners of war and civilianswho lost their lives because of Nazi policies

and practices during the war. According to R.J. Rummel of the University of Hawaii, whospecializes in studies of genocide, communistgovernments in the 20th century killed a totalof 95 million people. Of those victims, theSoviet regime was responsible for 39 milliondeaths and China under Mao Zedong for 45million. Martin Malia put the total between 85million and 100 million. Tony Judt ascribes 20million victims to the Soviet Union, 65 millionto China and a combined total of 6 million toCambodia, North Korea, Vietnam, and East-ern Europe. Robert Conquest cites the figureof 20 million Soviet victims. Dmitri Vol-kogonov, the Soviet historian, puts the num-ber of the victims of Soviet repression between19 million and 22 million.36

The far greater revulsion at Nazism couldalso be linked to a deep-seated aversion andambivalence to modern industrial society onthe part of Western elite groups, given the asso-ciation of the Holocaust with modern technol-ogy, such as gas chambers and crematoria. Infact, critiques of the Holocaust are sometimesimplicitly linked to critiques of Western indus-trial societies. Ideas such as “the banality ofevil,” which was introduced by the philosopherHannah Arendt, suggested that there wasnothing truly distinctive about the Nazi poli-cies and the mindset that led to the Holocaust.In her view, Eichmann-like human beingscould be found anywhere in modern bureau-cratic societies. In turn, studies by the socialpsychologist Stanley Milgram demonstratedthe human propensity to obey authority evenwhen that authority demands to inflict intensepain on human beings. His research suggeststhat a particular ideology or strong convictionsneed not play an important part in the inflic-tion of pain, suffering, or death. What theNazis did, in other words, could be duplicatedelsewhere. As far as I know, no Western socialscientist has sought to apply Milgram’s find-ings, insights, and methodology to the phe-nomenon of obedience to authority in com-munist societies.

There were also numerous morally relevantsimilarities between Nazism and communismthat need to be noted. Both Nazi and commu-

14

Only the idealistic

or utopian component of

both communismand Nazism could justify the scale ofpolitical violence

undertaken.

nist campaigns of extermination and politicalviolence had a cleansing, purifying goal. Thosepersecuted and killed were defined as socially,culturally, and morally harmful, as well as infe-rior and obstructive to the accomplishment oflaudable objectives such as the creation of abetter society or better world. The removal ofsuch groups was often conceptualized as a sur-gical procedure. Only the idealistic or utopiancomponent of both communism and Nazismcould justify the scale of political violenceundertaken. Communist ideals were, of course,much more attractive since they were moreuniversalistic than the Nazi ones, which restedon an immutable racial hierarchy.

Both the Nazi and communist regimestreated the accomplishment of their utopianobjectives very seriously. The Nazis divertedrailroad cars—at the time desperately neededby the German military—to transport Jews tothe extermination camps during a critical peri-od in World War II. It is less well known thatthe Soviet authorities showed a similar deter-mination to provide resources under condi-tions of scarcity for the deportation of suspectethnic groups between 1943 and 1944. In themiddle of the war “Stalin diverted thousandsof trucks and hundreds of thousands of sol-diers . . . in order to deport various people liv-ing in the Caucasus.” Earlier Beria deployed14,000 troops from the war effort to deportGerman-speaking minorities.37

A further important similarity is that nei-ther Nazi nor communist policies of victimiza-tion were, as a rule, based on actual behavior,but rather on belonging to certain categories orgroups that automatically conferred on theirmembers “socially undesirable” status. In theSoviet discourse, membership in “sociallyundesirable” groups amounted to involvementin “objective crime.” Whereas the Nazi cate-gories were mainly racial and ethnic, the Com-munist ones related to social origin, status,class, kinship, and other personal connections.Expression of unorthodox or nonconformistpolitical views, in both systems, was seen aspolitical hostility that had to be crushed.

Third, both systems used a putatively scien-tific justification for their policies of extermina-

tion or persuctuion. One was defined by racialtheories and the other by “scientific socialism”including, most relevantly, the Marxist doctrineof a class struggle.

Last but not least, both systems extractedlabor from their victims prior to their death—the communist ones on a far larger scale thanthe Nazis. In the same vein, both treated com-mon criminals better than political prisoners,and both persecuted homosexuals.

The Roots of Western Attitudes towardCommunism

The roots of the asymmetrical assessmentof Nazism and communism in the West reachback several decades—to the Cold War, theVietnam War, and McCarthyism. Each of thoseevents contributed to the rise of what has cometo be called “anti-anti-communism.” Accord-ing to the latter, while communism is notexactly commendable, anti-communism (usu-ally characterized as “irrational” or “obsessive”)has done more harm and is more disreputableand distasteful than communism.38

The roots of certain Western responses tothe collapse of Soviet communism go backeven further in time. There has been a long tra-dition of animosity toward commerce andcapitalism on the part of Western intellectuals,and among idealistic and educated people.This animosity led to a benefit of doubt, oroutright sympathy, toward political systemsthat were anti-capitalist, denounced the profitmotive, and proclaimed as their goal the cre-ation of a more humane, just, and egalitariansociety of altruistic human beings. The SovietUnion was the first such society. It was fol-lowed by Eastern Europe, China, Vietnam,Laos, North Korea, Cuba, Grenada, and Nica-ragua, as well as Angola, Ethiopia, and Mo-zambique.

The past misperception and idealization ofthose countries and their political systems hadan unmistakable and apparently ineradicableinfluence on the responses to their collapse orpartial transformation. Longstanding beliefs,even if ill conceived, are difficult to discard,especially when they are integral to the senseof identity of an individual or the group he or

15

Neither Nazi nor communistpolicies of victimizationwere based onactual behavior,but rather onbelonging to certain categoriesor groups.

she belongs to. Left-wing political ideals andaffiliations have been important sources ofidentity for large numbers of educated peoplein Western societies—especially since the1960s. They have been closely associated withyouthful idealism, a sense of community, andnotions of self-realization.

The misperceptions and misjudgments ofcommunist societies had recurring patternsand components.39 They were seen as strivingto realize the ideals of Marx and Engels, and bydoing so attaining high levels of socioeconom-ic equality and social justice. They were alsojudged to be enjoying broad popular supportand legitimacy. They were supposed to be soci-eties in which the perennial conflict betweenpersonal and public interest was largely tran-scended (or in the process of being transcend-ed), and in which most social pathologies ordefects that afflicted capitalist societies hadvanished (or were in the process of vanishing).These defects included unemployment, lack ofwork satisfaction, crime, juvenile delinquency,alcoholism, drug addiction, homelessness, un-equal access to education and healthcare, sex-ism, and the degradation of the natural envi-ronment. Even communist prisons wereconsidered superior settings for the humanetreatment and the rehabilitation of wrongdo-ers.

Communist societies were also lauded fortheir apparent success in dramatically raisingthe standard of living, rapid modernization,rational economic planning, and providingaccess to political participation for all citi-zens. It was also widely believed by thosefavorably disposed that those countries wereled by exceptionally wise, kind and knowl-edgeable leaders. Last but not least, manyWestern intellectuals believed that commu-nist systems were permeated by a new senseof purpose and community, banished alien-ation, and made life meaningful and satisfy-ing for the great majority of their citizens.

Most of those assessments were based onpredisposition, wishful thinking, the asser-tions of the communist propaganda, con-ducted tours in the communist countriesand, most importantly, a profound disaffec-

tion with the societies in which those intel-lectuals lived. That dissatisfaction led to sus-ceptibility to the attractions of communistsocieties that were seen as promising alterna-tives to Western corruptions, injustices andirrationalities. Many of those beliefs came tobe scaled down or discarded over time, butthey left a residue. The qualified disillusion-ment with communism left intact the cri-tiques and rejection of Western societies—especially of the United States.40

It is important to note here that the con-trast between the attitudes of “New Left” and“Old Left” toward the Soviet Union has beengreatly exaggerated. The New Left of the 1960s(and its spiritual successors) certainly lostinterest in and enthusiasm for the SovietUnion. But that change in attitude did not leadto a searching and critical look at the broaderideas associated with the left. Orthodox com-munist families produced many of the well-known 1960s activists—the so-called “red dia-per” babies—who admired the Soviet system.As the American sociologist Todd Gitlin wroteabout them, “They had grown up breathing aleft-wing air . . . being different, touched bynobility and persecution. . . . The majority ofNew Leftists were not the children of Com-munist or socialist parents, but some in ado-lescence were . . . influenced . . . by children whowere. From them the rest of us absorbed, byosmosis, the idea and precedent, and theromance of a left.”41 The radical political ac-tivist Angela Davis toured the Soviet Union inthe early 1970s and her admiration for theSoviet system was duly recorded in a contem-porary Soviet publication. Kathy Boudin, whobelonged to the Weather Underground—themost violent faction of the New Left—and whowent to jail for her actions, was the daughter ofold-leftist, pro-Soviet Leonard Boudin, promi-nent lawyer and defender of many leftistclients.42 Similar connections and affinitiesbetween the old and new left abound.

Coping with the CollapseSeveral strategies were developed by those

on the left to deal with (or to evade) the prob-lems created by the collapse of Soviet commu-

16

Both systemsused a putatively

scientific justification fortheir policies of

extermination orpersecution.

nism. While at the time of its collapse, theSoviet Union was no longer idealized by left-leaning Western intellectuals, the collapsecalled into question their deeper, prior com-mitments and convictions and offered anopportunity for some political and ideologicalsoul-searching. But few undertook such soulsearching because, even after the collapse,there remained some sympathy towards whatused to be called “the Soviet experiment.” Thislingering sympathy was also revealed by theoutrage and scorn that greeted PresidentRonald Reagan’s characterization of the Sovi-et Union as “an evil empire.” These attitudesrested on several considerations:

• The Soviet Union was not a capitalistsociety and was opposed to those thatwere. This fact by itself gave the SovietUnion a huge moral credit.•The Soviet Union was an adversary of the

United States and, as such, a restraint onAmerican imperialism and a defender ofthe more authentic revolutionary ThirdWorld countries, such as Cuba.• Even if many things went wrong in the

Soviet Union, it sought to realize, at leastinitially, the hopes and ideals of Marxism.

Eric Hobsbawm, the famous BritishMarxist historian, exemplifies these attitudesmost vividly. For him, the USSR remained asentimental repository of hopes for a betterworld. As he put it, “I belonged to the gener-ation tied by an almost unbreakable umbili-cal cord to hope of the world revolution andits original home, the October Revolution.”43

Hobsbawm personifies a typical response tothe collapse of Soviet communism that man-ages to neutralize the large volume of nega-tive information that became available aboutit. On the one hand, he admits that commu-nist systems such as the Soviet Union weredeeply flawed and that the good intentionsof their creators had horrific unintendedconsequences. On the other hand, he perse-veres in regarding those intentions and theideas that underpinned them as admirableand inspiring. He averred, “I think the dream

we had is a great dream, whether you call it asocialist dream or . . . the dream of general lib-eration. . . . . I think the people who devotedtheir life to this were enormously good peo-ple.”44

Did he include among those “good peo-ple” Stalin or the heads of the Soviet politicalpolice, like Yuri Andropov, Lavrentiy Beria,Felix Dzerzhinsky, and Nikolai Yezhov? Theleaders of the Soviet satellite states, like Nico-lae Ceauscescu of Romania, Mathias Rakosiof Hungary, and Walter Ulbricht of EastGermany? They all devoted their lives to the“dream” Hobsbawm still reveres and one thatcaused untold suffering.

Another approach to dealing with the prob-lems created by the collapse of the SovietUnion is exemplified by John Cole, an anthro-pologist formerly at the University of Massa-chusetts, who blamed the collapse on Westerncapitalism: “The communist countries shouldhave stayed on a road of purely socialist devel-opment instead of giving in to their citizens’demand for a more consumer-oriented econo-my. But because the West had the consumergoods, it was able in the 1980s to hoodwink thecommunist world into becoming trading part-ners, which tied its economic well-being to theWest’s. . . . The decline in the 1980s of worldcapitalism nailed Eastern Europe.”45

An almost reflexive recourse to moralequivalence between communism and capital-ism was another popular response to the col-lapse of the Soviet empire and its aftermath.According to the more radical leftists, regard-less of what was wrong with communist sys-tems, the greater evils of capitalism remain inplace and demand utmost critical attention. Itwas imperative not to allow the collapse andits moral implications to distract attentionfrom the evils of capitalism. Paul Sweezy of theMonthly Review hopefully wrote, “As far asglobal capitalism is concerned, its internalcontradictions will hardly be affected one wayor another [by the collapse] . . . These contra-dictions . . . continue to multiply and intensi-fy, with all indications pointing to the matur-ing of one or more serious crises in the not sodistant future.”46 Tom Wicker, the prominent

17

There has been along tradition ofanimosity towardcommerce andcapitalism on thepart of Westernintellectuals.

journalist, in an article that began with refer-ences to the Czechoslovak celebration of thecollapse of their communist regime wrote,“Freedom. . . is not a panacea and that com-munism failed does not make the Westernalternative perfect, or even satisfying for mil-lions of those who live under it.”47 After sur-veying the changes in Eastern Europe, DanielSinger of the University of Michigan conclud-ed, “our task is to spread the conviction that aradical change of society in all its aspects is onour own historical agenda. In the long run, thecollapse of the Stalinist model should help usin this search for a socialist alternative. . . . TheWestern left should get on with its job. It mustattack the very foundation of our own system. . . its incapacity of growth for any purposeother than profit . . . its commercialization ofart, culture and even human relationships; itsexploitation of the Third World and its per-petuation of social, sexual and racial inequi-ties.”48 Sheldon Wolin of Princeton Universityused the collapse to renew his critique ofAmerican society and to compare communistregimes favorably with the former. “In the pastdecade the perceptions and sensibilities ofmany Americans have been Reaganized,shaped by counterrevolutionary concernsregarding welfare, health care, ecology, govern-ment regulation of business . . . the rights ofminorities and women. . . . Even acknowledg-ing gross distortions, Communist regimeshave been the only ones that professed and tosome degree achieved a commitment to equal-ity.”49 One wonders if Wolin would have beenequally impressed if the governments ofWestern countries professed their committ-ment to equality without doing much aboutit. He seemed unaware of the politically deter-mined privileges of elite groups (and the asso-ciated, large, inequalities) in communist sys-tems.

Another popular response to the collapseamong many academic intellectuals has beenthe assertion that communism had nothing,or next to nothing, to do with Marxism.Therefore, the fall of communism did notbring disrepute to Marxism. That position wasnot limited to American leftists. Jutta

Ditfurth, a West German leftist, “argued at apanel discussion at Humboldt University inEast Berlin [that] there simply is no need toreexamine socialism’s validity as a modelbecause it was not socialism that was defeatedin eastern Europe and the Soviet Unionbecause these systems were never socialist.”50

Paul Robeson Jr., an American civil rightsactivist, came to believe that what he consid-ered the “death of Stalinism” amounted to the“birth of socialism.”51 Professors Sam Bowlesof the University of Massachusetts and PhilipGreen of Smith College averred that “for thefirst time in history there is a chance of a truesocialist and democratic state, one based onthe writings of Karl Marx. . . . Eastern Europenow will lead the way in creating the first trulysocialist nations . . . The soil in Eastern Europeis prime for true socialism to take root.”52

Many Western intellectuals believed thatthe Soviet system (even if no longer idealized)represented a valid and successful path tomodernization and was in some respectsmorally superior to the capitalist West. TheSoviet Union was also considered stable anddurable. Its abrupt collapse came as an un-pleasant surprise to many Western intellectualswho often anticipated with relish the impend-ing crisis and collapse of capitalism instead. Tocope with what psychologist Leon Festingercalled “cognitive dissonance,” they now resort-ed to denying that the Soviet Union wasMarxist or “genuinely” socialist. If it was notMarxist or socialist, the unexpected collapse ofthe Soviet Union did not matter, or mattered alot less. In any event the collapse did not threat-en Western intellectuals’ belief that capitalismwas more corrupt and doomed to collapseeventually.

Perhaps the most absurd and bizarre argu-ment put forward in defense of Marxismappeared in an editorial in The Nation: “Theexodus of . . . East Germans . . . cannot be inter-preted . . . as an abandonment of the teachingsof Karl Marx. . . . The country to which they aretraveling . . . is not Thatcher’s Britain or après-Reagan America . . . The new emigrants havechosen capitalism with a human face [i.e.,West Germany]. . . . And so the newcomers

18

Few of Che’sadmirers know or are ready to

admit that he wasalso a ruthless

fanatic.

have gone from Stalin back to Marx.”53

Evidently it did not occur to the writer of thateditorial that the appeals of West Germanyhad little to do with the political and econom-ic differences between West Germany on theone hand and Britain and the United States onthe other. West Germany was literally a walk-ing distance from East Germany. People spokethe same language and East Germans wereautomatically given West German citizenship.

Another widely used exculpatory techniquewas to call the collapsed system, or its defects,“Stalinist” thereby transferring the wrongs ofthe system onto an individual. That tech-nique, chosen by Khrushchev and his succes-sors in the Soviet Union, was singularly un-Marxist, given the deemphasis of Marx on therole of the individual in the historical process-es. Blaming Stalin for all that went wrong inthe Soviet Union was eagerly adopted byWestern intellectuals and communist apolo-gists in order to avoid confronting the obviousquestion: Why did the system allow or enableindividuals such as Stalin (and others in othercommunist states of similar character) to riseto power, accumulate huge amounts of power,and exercise it in the most arbitrary manner tothe obvious detriment of millions of people?

Sometimes the weaknesses of humannature and false consciousness, which the newsocialist environment apparently failed toeradicate, got blamed for the defects of thecommunist system. For example, Alan J.Spector of Purdue University and Peter Knappof Villanova University wrote, “the main rea-son that communism has not been realized isthat sufficient numbers of people do notunderstand why it is required and what itrequires.” The same authors “do not believethat the failure [of the communist systems] isa failure of Marxism.” After all, they argued,“the Soviets were trying something for the firsttime in history and it is hardly surprising thatthey made mistakes.”54

The proliferation of new causes or renewedpreoccupation with old ones were also amongthe responses embraced on the left to avoiddealing with the collapse of communism.That was a path chosen by many academic

intellectuals who immersed themselves inmulticulturalism, identity politics, postmod-ernism, radical feminism, post-colonial stud-ies, cultural studies, deconstructionism, moreesoteric explorations of Marxist theory, andnew critiques of American society.

Persistence of Communist IdeasNot only individual intellectuals but entire

professional associations of American acade-mic intellectuals have expressed favorable atti-tudes toward communist systems. The LatinAmerican Studies Association has repeatedlytaken positions supportive of Castro’s Cubaand Sandinista Nicaragua. The professionalassociation of anthropologists has taken simi-lar stands. During the Vietnam War, numer-ous other professional organizations passedresolutions supportive of North Vietnam andthe Vietcong. In 1990, the Organization ofAmerican Historians defeated a motion thatwelcomed glasnost in Soviet historiographyand expressed regret that the Organization ofAmerican Historians “never protested theforced betrayal of the historians’ responsibilityto truth imposed upon Soviet and EastEuropean historians by their political lead-ers.”55 To the best of my knowledge, none ofthese professional associations ever protestedviolations of human rights in communistpolice states or the crushing of uprisings inEast Germany in 1953, Hungary in 1956,Czechoslovakia in 1968, or Poland in the early1980s, or the Soviet invasion of Afghanistanand the large-scale atrocities committed by theSoviet forces in that country. They had ex-pressed no displeasure about the post–WorldWar II show trials in Eastern Europe, the mis-treatment of fellow academics in China duringthe Cultural Revolution, the imprisonment ofdissenters in Cuba, or the longstanding perse-cution of religious believers in all of thosecountries.

Another indication of the persistence ofcommunist sympathies in the West is thepraise heaped on present day leftist systems—especially Venezuela under Hugo Chávez. BillAyers, the former Weather Underground lead-er, delivered a speech “at Hugo Chavez’s side in

19

For Western intellectuals, themorally repellentattributes of communist systems remainabstractions.

Venezuela in 2006. . . . He told the assembledrevolutionaries that education ‘is the motorforce of revolution’ and Venezuela shows thepath of how ‘to overcome the failings of capi-talist education.’” He ended his speech with“Viva Presidente Chávez! Viva la RevolucionBolivariana!”56 Clearly, Ayers found Venezuelaunder Chávez a promising setting on which toproject his lifelong political values and aspira-tions fueled by his relentless loathing of hisown society. Similarly, Cindy Sheehan, aprominent protestor of the Iraq War, em-braced (literally and figuratively) Hugo Chávezat a rally in Caracas, Venezuela. Chávez, inturn, assured her “Cindy, we are with you inyour fight.” As the New York Times reported,“Mr. Chavez has become a voice for manyopponents of the Bush administration whoare drawn to his self-styled socialist revolutionand his close alliance with . . . Fidel Castro.”Hollywood celebrities such as Sean Penn,Danny Glover, and Harry Belafonte have alsoembraced Chávez.57

Communist Cuba continues to elicit warmfeelings from famous Western intellectualsand entertainers, including the late playwrightHarold Pinter, author Nadine Gordimer, mu-sician Harry Belafonte, and writer Tariq Ali,who “signed a letter claiming that in Cuba‘there has been not a single disappearance, tor-ture or extrajudicial execution since 1959.’”58

Even North Korea was occasionally giventhe benefit of the doubt. In the spring of 2006,the Harvard Alumni Association organized atour of that country. This was not intended asa critical fact-finding mission since all suchtours are strictly controlled by the NorthKorean authorities. The tour memo instructedthe tourists that they “will be expected to bowas a gesture of respect at the statue of Kim IlSung.” The memo explained that such bowingis appropriate because “North Korea like everycountry has its unique protocols.”59 On hisgoodwill visit to North Korea in 1994, formerPresident Jimmy Carter “heaped praise on KimIl Sung . . . [saying] ‘I found him to be vigorous,intelligent, well informed.’” Carter also noted“the reverence with which they [the NorthKorean people] look upon their leader.”60

The continued cult of Guevara, includingthe stunning commercialization of his image,is yet another indication of the persistence ofthe attitudes discussed herein. Michiko Kaku-tani of the New York Times, wrote: “Che lives!Not just in the heart of revolutionaries, Marxistinsurgents, and rebellious teenagers, but on t-shirts, watches, sneakers, key chains, cigarettelighters, coffee mugs, wallets, backpacks,mouse pads, beach towels and condoms. . . . Hehas also been employed by merchants to sell airfresheners in Peru, snowboards in Switzerland,and wine in Italy. The supermodel GiseleBundchen pranced down a runway in a Chebikini. . . . An Australian company produced a‘cherry Guevara’ ice cream line.”61

Che Guevara is of course closely identifiedwith Cuba—one of the few surviving ortho-dox communist systems. He is widely seen asthe personification of the authentic, idealisticrevolutionary—his authenticity warranted byhis death while organizing a guerilla move-ment in Bolivia. He reminded I. F. Stone, thefamous American investigative journalist(revered by those on the left), of Jesus. Hewrote: “In Che one felt a desire to heal andpity for suffering. . . . It was out of love, like theperfect knight of medieval romance, that heset out to combat with the powers of theworld. . . . He was like an early saint.”62

Most of Che’s Western admirers onlyknow of his heroic death and, possibly, of hisbelonging to a small group of revolutionarieswho, led by Fidel Castro, landed in a smallboat in Cuba to start a guerilla movementthat eventually overthrew the regime ofFulgencio Batista. But few of his admirersknow or are ready to admit that he was also aruthless fanatic, capable without hesitation toorder the execution of those he regarded asobstacles to the utopian social system hewished to create. He was the classic embodi-ment of the revolutionary intent on redeem-ing mankind, but profoundly indifferenttoward concrete, individual human beings. Inhis own words, he extolled “hatred as an ele-ment of struggle: unbending hatred for theenemy, which pushes a human being beyondhis natural limitations, making him into an

20

When politicalbeliefs satisfy

important emotional needs

and bolster afavorable

self-conception,they are likely to

endure.

effective, violent, selective and cold-bloodedkilling machine.”63

The publication by Harvard UniversityPress and the academic popularity of a bookentitled Empire, coauthored by convictedItalian terrorist Antonio Negri and filled withradical-left rhetoric and glorification of politi-cal violence, also testifies to the continuedattractiveness of ideas inspired by Marxismand the hatred of Western capitalist democra-cies.64

The faith in the essential innocence ofJulius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were execut-ed for spying for the Soviet Union in 1953, alsopersists. They are often “portrayed as martyrsfor civil liberties, righteous dissenters.” As theAmerican historian Ronald Radosh wrote, “Tothis day this received wisdom permeates oureducational system. A recent study . . . hasfound that very few college textbooks say sim-ply that the Rosenbergs were guilty. . . . .Mosteither state that the couple were innocent orthat the trial was ‘controversial’ or they excusewhat [they] did by saying ‘it was not that bad.What they provided wasn’t important.’”65 At aFordham University Law School Forum in2006, Tony Kushner, an American playwrightand screenwriter, argued that the Rosenbergswere “murdered.” E. L. Doctorow, an Ameri-can novelist, asserted that the Rosenberg casewas fabricated to fan the flames of the ColdWar and to impose on the American public “aPuritan, punitive civil religion.”66

The rehabilitation of certain well known1960s radicals, some of whom were earlierengaged in acts of violence, is also sympto-matic of the continued attractiveness andrespectability of the ideas and ideals theychampioned. The case of Bill Ayers is the mostnoteworthy. A petition on his behalf that wassigned by over 3,000 “educators” (includingtwo editors of the moderate socialist Dissentmagazine and a number of well known profes-sors and writers) portrays him as “a victim ofMcCarthyite slurs.”67 An op-ed article by theNew York Times columnist Gail Collins belit-tled or dismissed serious charges againsthim.68 He was twice interviewed in the NewYork Times Magazine and given an opportunity

to put forward his views and rebut his critics.69

In December 2008 the New York Times provid-ed him with space for a self-serving op-ed arti-cle in which he protested his designation as an“unrepentant terrorist.”70 This is the sameman who was quoted in another New YorkTimes article in 2001 as saying that “I don’tregret setting bombs . . . I feel we didn’t doenough.”71 In his memoir, Ayers has written ofhis bombing of the Pentagon: “Everything wasabsolutely ideal on the day I bombed thePentagon. The sky was blue. The birds weresinging. And the bastards were finally going toget what was coming to them.”72

Prospects

Why have the beliefs and attitudes hereinexamined persisted among substantial num-bers of Western intellectuals and portions ofthe educated public? The most important rea-son is the continued, profound aversion tocapitalism made more plausible by the recentglobal financial-economic crisis and the steepgrowth of executive compensation in recentyears. Capitalism is also held responsible forthe subversion of nation states, the exploita-tion of the Third World, and the destructionof nature. But the deepest roots of anti-capi-talism are spiritual. Capitalism is blamed by itsmost ardent critics for undermining the mostprecious attributes of human nature. AsNorman Mailer put it, “In America it is notthat surplus value is extorted from us so muchas that we are spiritually exploited and deniedthe opportunity to find our true growth.”73

Even the free-market economist JosephSchumpeter wrote that “capitalism creates acritical frame of mind, which, after havingdestroyed the moral authority of so many oth-er institutions turns against its own. . . . Therationalist attitude does not stop at the cre-dentials of kings and popes but goes on toattack private property and the whole schemeof bourgeois values.”74

More generally speaking, the discontentsand problems of modernity persist and areoften identified with and blamed on capital-

21

The CommunistParty was notcomposed of themost selfless and idealistic representatives of the workingclasses.

ism. Most important among them, for the pre-sent discussion, are the perception of socialisolation and of a decline of the sense of com-munity and purpose.

Western intellectuals who remain attract-ed to communist ideals never had the disillu-sioning experience of living in an actual com-munist or socialist society. For them, themorally repellent attributes of communist sys-tems remain abstractions that cannot com-pete with the vividness and personal experi-ence of the flaws and injustices of Westernsocieties.

Communist ideals have also retained andregained some of their attractiveness becauseof some of the trends and developments informer communist states. While some formercommunist states succeeded in creating stablecapitalist democracies, the most importantone, Russia, has regressed to authoritarianismand aggressive nationalism. In most formercommunist countries, new inequalities andabuses of power emerged, while the inequitiesof the old regimes, never well-known in theWest, are being rapidly forgotten.

Last but not least, the continued attrac-tiveness of communism rests on the humancapacity to dissociate ends from means, goodintentions from poor results, ideals fromrealities, and theory from practice. ArthurKoestler called this capacity to assign an over-whelming moral importance to the endswhile overlooking or dismissing the humancosts of those ends “the doctrine of unshak-en foundations.”75

Communist ideals persist because it isalways easier to retain familiar, deeply inter-nalized beliefs held over long periods of timethan to radically revise or discard them. Suchbeliefs are especially compelling to hold on towhen they are widely shared—as is the casewith the entire left-of-center, adversarial ideo-logical heritage and subculture left behindfrom the 1960s. Millions of people in the Westassociate communist ideas and ideals withtheir youth, youthful idealism, and their betterselves. These ideas have become an integralpart of their sense of identity, especially ofintellectuals who are uncertain of their social

function, while being drawn to the role ofrighteous critics of their society. When politi-cal beliefs satisfy important emotional needsand bolster a favorable self-conception, theyare likely to endure.

Notes1. The Eastern European communist states col-lapsed in 1989, symbolized by the removal of theBerlin Wall, but the Soviet Union itself dissolvedonly in 1991.

2. The concept of alienation was developed andwidely used by Marx to describe the negativeimpact of capitalism on industrial workers as wellas society as a whole. The workers, Marx asserted,had no control over their working conditions,wages, and more generally, their entire life; theywere exploited, deprived materially and spiritual-ly, and incapable of experiencing work satisfac-tion. The term alienation came to be used morewidely to designate a feeling of exclusion, impov-erished social relations, incomprehension of thesocial order, and stunted human development.

3. For a few representative definitions and dis-cussion of totalitarianism see Hannah Arendt, TheOrigins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt,Brace, 1969); Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy,ed. Carl Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski (Cam-bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967);Totalitarianism in Perspective, ed. Carl J. Friedrich,Michael Curtis, and Benjamin R Barber (NewYork: Praeger, 1969); Tom Gleason, Totalitarian-ism: The Inner History of the Cold War (New York:Oxford University Press, 1995); A. James Gregor,Contemporary Radical Ideologies: Totalitarian Thoughtin the 20th Century (New York: Random House,1968); Paul Hollander, “Observations on Bureauc-racy, Totalitarianism and the Comparative Studyof Communism,” Slavic Review, June 1967; Bar-rington Moore, “Totalitarian Elements in Pre-industrial Societies,” in his Political Power andSocial Theory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress, 1958); Leonard Schapiro, Totalitarianism(London: Pall Mall Press, 1972); J. L. Talmon, TheOrigins of Totalitarian Democracy (New York: Mer-cury, 1961).

4. There were some anticipations of a collapse ofthe Soviet Union that did not entail specific esti-mates as to when it might occur. They were basedon the belief that the system was inherently weak,backward, badly administered, possessed little legit-imacy, and was plagued by chronic and systemiceconomic difficulties. Such beliefs were expressed,among others, by Andrei Amalrik, Robert Con-

22

Few colleges oruniversities offer

courses about the former or

remaining communist systems, let alone their

massive humanrights violations.

quest, F. A. Hayek, Bernard Levin and Ludwig vonMises. Edward Crane, founder and president ofCato Institute, predicted in 1982 (following a visitto the Soviet Union) that the Soviet system “wouldcollapse in 20 years of its own weight.” TowardLiberty: The Idea That Changed the World, ed. DavidBoaz (Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2002), p.166.

5. For a summary of such perceptions see PaulHollander, “Judgments and Misjudgments” inThe Collapse of Communism, ed. Lee Edwards (Stan-ford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2000).

6. Richard Kapuscinski, a Polish author wrote:“just before the break-up of the USSR, the view ofthat country as a model of the most stable anddurable system in the world had gained wideacceptance among Western Sovietologists” inImperium (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1994), p. 314.

7. Alexander Dallin: “Causes of the Collapse of theUSSR,” Post-Soviet Affairs, no. 4. (July-September1992), p.282.

8. Valentin Turchin, a prominent Soviet dissenter,aptly summed up the internal perceptions of thesystem that prevented people from conceiving ofchange: “the basis of the social order [in the SovietUnion] is considered by its citizens as absolutelyimmutable. . . . They consider it a given, asNewton’s Law. When you fall don’t blame gravity.”Quoted in David Shipler, Russia (New York: TimesBooks, 1983), p. 194.

9. Stephen F. Cohen, Soviet Fates and Lost Alterna-tives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War (New York:Columbia University Press, 2009), pp. 90, 149.

10. “Nomenklatura” refers to the party elite, thefull-time functionaries. It also refers to all higher-level appointees in the military, governmentbureaucracy, economy, educations institutions,etc., that required party approval.

11. Richard Pipes, “The Fall of the Soviet Union”in The Collapse of Communism, pp. 42, 46.

12. Martin Malia, “The Highest Stage of Social-ism,” in The Collapse of Communism, p. 71.

13. Milovan Djilas and Vasilije Kalezic• , The Fall of theNew Class: A History of Communism’s Self-Destruction(New York: A. A. Knopf, 1998), pp. 289, 302.

14. Quoted in Russian Culture at the Crossroads, ed.Dmitri N. Shalin (Boulder, CO: Westview Press,1996), p. 121.

15. Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism:The Breakdown v. 3: Its Rise, Growth and Dissolution

(New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 527.

16. Alexander Wat, My Century: The Odyssey of aPolish Intellectual (Berkeley, CA: University of Cali-fornia Press, 1988), p. 173.

17. Thomas Aczel and Tibor Meray, Tisztito Vihar(Munich: Griff Kiado• , 1978), p. 276.

18. See also Paul Hollander, “Crossing the MoralThreshold: The Rejection of Communist Systemsin Hungary and Eastern Europe” in Resistance,Rebellion and Revolution in Hungary and CentralEurope: Commemorating 1956, ed. Laszlo Peter andMartyn Rady (London: Hungarian Cultural Centre,2008).

19. Cohen, pp. 123, 124, 129, 131, 134.

20. See also John Clark and Aaron Wildavsky, TheMoral Collapse of Communism (San Francisco, CA:Institute for Contemporary Studies, 1990).

21. See also Paul Hollander, The Only Super Power:Reflections on Strength, Weakness and Anti-Americanism(Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009).

22. See Francis Fukuyama, The End of History andthe Last Man (New York: Maxwell MacmillanInternational, 1992).

23. For a recent debate on revisionism see the SlavicReview, Fall 2008 and Spring 2009 issues. In the for-mer, prominent revisionists reappraised and recon-firmed their positions; in the latter, critiques ofthose positions were published. See also PeterKenez, “Stalinism as Humdrum Politics,” RussianReview, October 1986; and Paul Hollander, “MoralResponses to the Great Mass Murders of OurCentury,” in Discontents: Postmodern and Postcommu-nist, ed. Paul Hollander (New Brunswick, NJ: Trans-action Publishers, 2002).

24. “Introduction,” in Intellectuals and Politics inCentral Europe, ed. Andras Bozoki (Budapest: CEUPress, 1999), p. 6.

25. James R. Millar and Sharon L. Wolchik, TheSocial Legacy of Communism (Cambridge, UK: Cam-bridge University Press 1994), p. 7.

26. Quoted in Ste• phane Courtois et al., Black Bookof Communism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Universi-ty Press, 1999), p. XIII.

27. See Eva Jaskovska and John P. Moran, “Justiceor Politics? Civil and Political Adjudication in theNewly Independent Baltic States,” Journal of Com-munist Studies and Transition Politics, December 2006.

28. Masvilag—Politikai Esszek (or Another World:

23

Political Essays) (Budapest: Uj Mandatum, 1994),p.8.

29. Kang Zhengguo quoted in Jonathan Mirsky,“He Won’t Give In,” New York Review of Books(February 14, 2008), p. 47.

30. An important exception has been the Annals ofCommunism series published by Yale UniversityPress, based on previously inaccessible documentsfrom former Soviet state and party archives.

31. For earlier discussions of these differences bythis author see “Resisting the Lessons of History, orHow the Adversary Culture Responded to the Dis-integration of Communism,” in Paul Hollander,Decline and Discontent: Communism and the West Today(New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers,1992); Hollander, “Moral Responses to the GreatMass Murders of Our Century” in Discontents:Postmodern and Postcommunist (New Brunswick, NJ:Transaction Publishers, 2002); and “Introduction:The Distinctive Features of Repression inCommunist States,” in Paul Hollander, From theGulag to the Killing Fields (Wilmington, DE: ISIBooks, 2006), esp. pp. xx–xxxix.

32. There is a Victims of Communism MemorialFoundation in Washington, DC, but its efforts sofar have resulted only in a virtual, online “muse-um” that concerns communist systems and theirvictims and a small sculptural memorial in theDistrict of Columbia.

33. Courtois et al., p. x.

34. For some examples see Frederick Schuman’sreview of Kravchenko’s I Chose Freedom in the NewRepublic, May 6, 1946; and Arch Getty’s fulmina-tion about the lack of integrity of defectors inStalinist Terror: New Perspectives, ed. J. Arch Gettyand Roberta T. Manning (New York: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1993), pp. 40–41; for an articlecalling into question the accounts of Pol Pot’s ter-ror by Cambodian refugees see Noam Chomskyand Edward S. Herman, “Distortions at FourthHand,” The Nation, June 25, 1977; also by the sameauthors, After the Cataclysm (Boston: South EndPress, 1979). In turn, Nicholas Kristof cautionedabout taking at face value reports of formerinmates of the North Korean Gulag; see his“Survivors Report Torture in North Korean LaborCamps,” New York Times, July 14, 1996.

35. Jay Nordlinger, “Undies, Comrade? The Prob-lem of Products Bearing Communist Symbols,”National Review (July 6, 2009).

36. R. J. Rummel, “War Isn’t the Century’s BiggestKiller,” Wall Street Journal, July 7, 1996; see also hisLethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since1917 (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers

1996); Courtois et al., p. x; Tony Judt, “The LongestRoad to Hell,” New York Times, December 22, 1997;Robert Conquest, The Great Terror (New York:Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 485–86; DmitriVolkogonov, Victory and Tragedy: The Political Portraitof Stalin (Budapest: Zrinyi, 1990), p. 413.

37. Courtois et al., pp. 16, 217.

38. For a discussion of anti-anti-communism, seePaul Hollander, The Survival of the Adversary Culture(New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1988),esp. pp. 24–25. Also Paul Hollander, Anti-American-ism: Irrational and Rational (New Brunswick, NJ:Transaction Publishers, 1995), esp. pp. 21–22. I donot know who introduced the term, possiblySidney Hook. The spirit of anti-anti-communismis given an illuminating, sentimental reflection inVivian Gornick, The Romance of American Commu-nism (New York: Basic Books, 1977).

39. For a rich repository of such misperceptionsand misjudgments see, by this author PoliticalPilgrims: Western Intellectuals in Search of the GoodSociety (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publish-ers, 1998); see also “The Pilgrimage to Nicaragua,”in Paul Hollander, Anti-Americanism; also “Judg-ments and Misjudgments.”

40. On disillusionment with communist systemsas well as the resistance to such disillusionment seePaul Hollander, The End of Commitment: Intellectuals,Revolutionaries and Political Morality (Chicago: I. R.Dee, 2006), esp. Chaps. 7 and 9.

41. Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days ofRage (New York: Bantam Books, 1987), pp. 20–21.

42. Olga Chechetkina, Andzela v Sovetskom Souze(Angela in the Soviet Union), Moscow, 1973; SusanBraudy, Family Circle: The Boudins and the Aristocracyof the Left (New York: Knopf, 2003), pp. 132–133.

43. Quoted in James Kurth, “If men were angels. . . .Reflections on the world of Eric Hobsbawm,”National Interest, Summer 1995, p. 9.

44. Quoted in Robert Conquest, “Who Was Right,Who Was Wrong and Why?” Encounter (Septem-ber 1990), p. 29.

45. Quoted in Ron Grossman, “The MarxistBrothers,” Chicago Tribune, March 18, 1991.

46. Paul M. Sweezy, “Is This Then the End ofSocialism?” The Nation (February 26, 1990), p. 278.

47. Tom Wicker, “Freedom for What?” New YorkTimes, January 5, 1990.

48. Daniel Singer, “Revolutionary Nostalgia,” TheNation (November 20, 1989), p. 600; and Daniel

24

Singer, “Europe in the Post-Yalta Era,” The Nation(December 11, 1989), p. 720.

49. Sheldon Wolin, “Beyond Marxism and Mon-etarism,” The Nation (March 19, 1989), p. 373.

50. Quoted in Andre S. Markovits, “The WestGerman Left in a Changing Europe,” in The Crisis ofSocialism in Europe, ed. Christiane Lemke and GaryMarks (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1992),p. 184.

51. Quoted in Donald Bauer, “Leftists in theWilderness,” U.S. News and World Report (March19, 1990), p. 27.

52. Robert Grabar, “Marxists in Area Predict BetterTime for Socialism,” Daily Hampshire Gazette (Feb-ruary 8, 1989), p.11.

53. “Borderline Marxists,” The Nation (October 2,1989), p. 333.

54. Peter Knapp and Alan J. Spector, Crisis andChange: Basic Questions of Marxist Sociology (Chicago:Nelson-Hall, 1991), pp. xi, 251, 245.

55. Wilcomb E. Washburn, The Treason of Intellectuals(Herndon, VA: Young America’s Foundation, 1991),p. 18.

56. Quoted in “The Real Threat Posed by BillAyers,” Ronald Radosh Blog, October 20, 2008,http://pajamasmedia.com/ronradosh/2008/10/20/the-real-threat-posed-by-bill-ayers/.

57. “Antiwar Campaigner Speaks on ChavezBroadcast,” New York Times, January 29, 2006. Seealso Juan Forero, “Visitors Seek a Taste of Revo-lution in Venezuela,” New York Times, March 21,2006. Also, see “Celebrity Fans,” Newsweek, Septem-ber 3, 2007.

58. Quoted in Ian Buruma, “Thank You, My FoolishFriends in the West,” Sunday Times (London), May 15,2006.

59. Deborah Orin, “Harvard Loves a Thug,” NewYork Post (online edition), May 1, 2006.

60. Quoted in George Will, “Carter Misreads NorthKorea’s Kim,” Daily Hampshire Gazette, June 24,1994.

61. Michiko Kakutani, review of Che’s Afterlife: TheLegacy of an Image, by Michael Casey, New YorkTimes, April 20, 2009.

62. “The Legacy of Che Guevara,” Ramparts, De-cember 1967, p. 21.

63. Quoted in Alvaro Vargas Llosa, “The KillingMachine,” New Republic, July 11, 2005, pp. 25, 26.

64. Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, Empire(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2000).

65. Ronald Radosh, “Case Closed: The RosenbergsWere Soviet Spies,” Los Angeles Times, September 17,2008.

66. Joseph Rago, “Rosenberg Reruns,” Wall StreetJournal, January 27, 2006.

67. Paul Berman, “Bill Ayers Fan Club,” DailyBeast.com (October 15, 2008), http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-10-15/bill-ayers-fan-club/; Ronald Radosh, “The Real Threat Posedby Bill Ayers.”

68. Gail Collins, “Clearing Ayers,” New York Times,October 9, 2008.

69. “Questions for Bill Ayers: Forever Rad,” NewYork Times Magazine, September 16, 2001; “RadicalCheer,” Ibid., February 15, 2009.

70. Bill Ayers, “The Real Bill Ayers,” New York Times,December 5, 2008.

71. Dinitia Smith, “No Regrets for a Love of Ex-plosives,” New York Times, September 11, 2001.

72. Bill Ayers, Fugitive Days: A Memoir (New York:Beacon Press 2001), p. 256. The statement quotedis followed by a convoluted disclaimer. Furtherdown on the same page he wrote: “the governmentwas dead wrong, and we were right. In our conflictwe don’t talk; we don’t tell. We never confess.”

73. New Yorker, Letters, October 6, 2008, p. 57.

74. Joseph Alois Schumpeter, Democracy, Capitalism,Socialism (New York: Harper 1950), p. 144.

75. Arthur Koestler, The Yogi and the Commissar(New York: Collier Books, 1961), p. 123.

25

STUDIES IN THE POLICY ANALYSIS SERIES

650. Yes, Mr President: A Free Market Can Fix Health Care by Michael F. Cannon (October 21, 2009)

649. Somalia, Redux: A More Hands-Off Approach by David Axe (October 12, 2009)

648. Would a Stricter Fed Policy and Financial Regulation Have Averted the Financial Crisis? by Jagadeesh Gokhale and Peter Van Doren (October 8, 2009)

647. Why Sustainability Standards for Biofuel Production Make Little Economic Sense by Harry de Gorter and David R. Just (October 7, 2009)

646. How Urban Planners Caused the Housing Bubble by Randal O’Toole (October 1, 2009)

645. Vallejo Con Dios: Why Public Sector Unionism Is a Bad Deal for Taxpayers and Representative Government by Don Bellante, David Denholm, and Ivan Osorio (September 28, 2009)

644. Getting What You Paid For—Paying For What You Get: Proposals for theNext Transportation Reauthorization by Randal O’Toole (September 15, 2009)

643. Halfway to Where? Answering the Key Questions of Health Care Reformby Michael Tanner (September 9, 2009)

642. Fannie Med? Why a “Public Option” Is Hazardous to Your Health by Michael F. Cannon (July 27, 2009)

641. The Poverty of Preschool Promises: Saving Children and Money with theEarly Education Tax Credit by Adam B. Schaeffer (August 3, 2009)

640. Thinking Clearly about Economic Inequality by Will Wilkinson (July 14, 2009)

639. Broadcast Localism and the Lessons of the Fairness Doctrine by John Samples (May 27, 2009)

638. Obamacare to Come: Seven Bad Ideas for Health Care Reformby Michael Tanner (May 21, 2009)

637. Bright Lines and Bailouts: To Bail or Not To Bail, That Is the Questionby Vern McKinley and Gary Gegenheimer (April 21, 2009)

636. Pakistan and the Future of U.S. Policy by Malou Innocent (April 13, 2009)

635. NATO at 60: A Hollow Alliance by Ted Galen Carpenter (March 30, 2009)

634. Financial Crisis and Public Policy by Jagadeesh Gokhale (March 23, 2009)

633. Health-Status Insurance: How Markets Can Provide Health Securityby John H. Cochrane (February 18, 2009)

632. A Better Way to Generate and Use Comparative-Effectiveness Researchby Michael F. Cannon (February 6, 2009)

631. Troubled Neighbor: Mexico’s Drug Violence Poses a Threat to the United States by Ted Galen Carpenter (February 2, 2009)

630. A Matter of Trust: Why Congress Should Turn Federal Lands into Fiduciary Trusts by Randal O’Toole (January 15, 2009)

629. Unbearable Burden? Living and Paying Student Loans as a First-Year Teacher by Neal McCluskey (December 15, 2008)

628. The Case against Government Intervention in Energy Markets: Revisited Once Again by Richard L. Gordon (December 1, 2008)

627. A Federal Renewable Electricity Requirement: What’s Not to Like?by Robert J. Michaels (November 13, 2008)

626. The Durable Internet: Preserving Network Neutrality without Regulation by Timothy B. Lee (November 12, 2008)

625. High-Speed Rail: The Wrong Road for America by Randal O’Toole (October 31, 2008)

624. Fiscal Policy Report Card on America’s Governors: 2008 by Chris Edwards(October 20, 2008)

623. Two Kinds of Change: Comparing the Candidates on Foreign Policyby Justin Logan (October 14, 2008)

622. A Critique of the National Popular Vote Plan for Electing the President by John Samples (October 13, 2008)

621. Medical Licensing: An Obstacle to Affordable, Quality Care by Shirley Svorny (September 17, 2008)

ANNE APPLEBAUMWASHINGTON POST

GURCHARAN DASFORMER CEO, PROCTER

& GAMBLE, INDIA

ARNOLD HARBERGERUNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

AT LOS ANGELES

FRED HUGOLDMAN SACHS, ASIA

PEDRO-PABLO KUCZYNSKIFORMER PRIME MINISTER OF PERU

DEEPAK LALUNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

AT LOS ANGELES

JOSÉ PIÑERAFORMER MINISTER OF LABOR AND

SOCIAL SECURITY, CHILE

T he Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity was established to promotea better understanding around the world of the benefits of market-lib-eral solutions to some of the most pressing problems faced by develop-

ing nations. In particular, the center seeks to advance policies that protect humanrights, extend the range of personal choice, and support the central role of eco-nomic freedom in ending poverty. Scholars in the center address a range of economic development issues, including economic growth, international finan-cial crises, the informal economy, policy reform, the effectiveness of official aid agencies, public pension privatization, the transition from socialism to the mar-ket, and globalization.

For more information on the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, visit www.cato.org/economicliberty/.

Nothing in this Development Policy Analysis should be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the

Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity or the Cato Institute or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of

any bill before Congress. Contact the Cato Institute for reprint permission. Additional copies of Development

Policy Analysis are $6 each ($3 for five or more). To order, contact the Cato Institute, 1000 Massachusetts

Avenue, N.W., Washington, DC, 20001, (202) 842-0200, fax (202) 842-3490, www.cato.org.

OTHER STUDIES ON DEVELOPMENT FROM THE CATO INSTITUTE

BOARD OF ADVISERS

“Socialism Kills: The Human Cost of Delayed Economic Reform in India” by Swaminathan S.Anklesaria Aiyar, Development Briefing Paper no. 4 (October 21, 2009)

“An International Monetary Fund Currency to Rival the Dollar? Why Special Drawing RightsCan’t Play That Role” by Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar, Development Policy Analysis no. 10(July 7, 2009)

“The False Promise of Gleneagles: Misguided Priorities at the Heart of the New Push forAfrican Development” by Marian L. Tupy, Development Policy Analysis no. 9 (April 24, 2009)

“El Salvador: A Central American Tiger?” by Juan Carlos Hidalgo, Development Policy Analysisno. 8 (March 9, 2009)

“The Benefits of Port Liberalization: A Case Study from India” by Swaminathan S. AnklesariaAiyar, Development Policy Analysis no. 7 (December 3, 2008)

“Zimbabwe: From Hyperinflation to Growth” by Steve H. Hanke, Development Policy Analysisno. 6 (June 25, 2008)

“A Decade of Suffering in Zimbabwe: Economic Collapse and Political Repression underRobert Mugabe” by David Coltart, Development Policy Analysis no. 5 (March 24, 2008)

“Fifteen Years of Transformation in the Post-Communist World: Rapid Reformers OutperformedGradualists” by Oleh Havrylyshyn, Development Policy Analysis no. 4 (November 9, 2007)