Abstract

History turns on a new hinge

People have witnessed in the past months astonishing events, coming one after another, in the final two months of 1989. The first signals were ideological, with the overthrow of forty-year-old taboos, with the publication of nonauthors and the rehabilitation of nonpersons. Then, in the Soviet Union, the curbing of the K.G.B., the surge forward in glasnost, the assertion of some forms of law. Then the astonishing televised theater of the Soviet Parliament and the defeat and humiliation of party officials in elections, followed by waves of strikes, especially of the miners, and the outburst of nationalisms. Then the rapid loosening of controls in Eastern and Central Europe and the virtual dissolution of the Hungarian Communist Party. There is a ludicrous notion that the whole of Eastern and Central Europe is now intent upon hurling itself into a market economy, the restoration of capitalism in a Thatcherite form. And yet the very substantial confederation of political forces gathered around the European Nuclear Disarmament movement, not only predicted some of it but has been actively working toward it for a decade.