1989, They wanted to be free - Vladimir Tismăneanu (Times Literary Supplement)

The role of ideas in the demise of Communist regimes can never be stressed too much. These “ideocratic partocracies”, in Martin Malia’s phrase, could not outlive the death of their utopian underpinnings. Societies in East Central Europe, the Soviet Union and elsewhere had been rebuilt according to ideological blueprints: the command economy, the New Man, universal surveillance over mind and body. By the 1980s, the time of the true believers had passed, even if many retained their Party cards. It was the revolt, and the revival, of the mind that killed the Communist Leviathan, not just among dissidents, but also among disenchanted Communist intellectuals, who had become increasingly convinced of the system’s decrepitude. Lire la suite