Abstract

After the Wall , A New Socialism ?

"The Party always arrives five minutes after the hour," one critical East Berlin, Germany Communist complained bitterly, just as events there were gathering momentum. On this occasion, for once, his Party was able to keep up with the pace, yet his complaint could serve as a motto for the story of the abortive attempts to salvage the Stalinist heritage and reform a system that is now in complete collapse. The Stalinist model was brought to Eastern Europe by the liberating forces of the Red Army. Designed for the rapid industrialization of backward Russia, it was already at the end of its tether. Paradoxically, while many socialist ideas penetrated the popular unconscious, above all the yearning for social justice and equality, socialism as an idea, even the very name, was discredited. In 1956 the revisionists who advocated change in Eastern Europe assumed that their societies, while in need of radical transformation, were fundamentally socialist in character and could be changed from within.