The Collapse of Communism

It is fascinating, is it not, to witness the collapse of Communism. But is this, in fact, what we are witnessing? In one sense, the All-Union Conference of the Communist Party at the end of June was a gigantic funeral service: the burial of a doctrine and of the hopes and delusions built upon it. But Mikhail Gorbachev was presenting the occasion in different terms: as a time of hope and of rebuilding.

Before coming back to the General Secretary, let us glance elsewhere—at North Korea, for instance. One would have said that (leaving aside the very peculiar case of Albania) North Korea shared with Rumania the special distinction of being the most repressive totalist regime in the world. The aged dictator of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, “Marshal” Kim II Sung (b. 1912), vied with Rumania’s Nicolae Ceausescu for the most pervasive cult of personality since the death of Stalin. He still does: statues, shrines, generalized idolatry. And yet.

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Brian Crozier

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It is fascinating, is it not, to witness the collapse of Communism. But is this, in fact, what we are witnessing? In one sense, the All-Union Conference of the Communist Party at the end of June was a gigantic funeral service: the burial of a doctrine and of the hopes and delusions built upon it. But Mikhail Gorbachev was presenting the occasion in different terms: as a time of hope and of rebuilding.

Before coming back to the General Secretary, let us glance elsewhere—at North Korea, for instance. One would have said that (leaving aside the very peculiar case of Albania) North Korea shared with Rumania the special distinction of being the most repressive totalist regime in the world. The aged dictator of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, “Marshal” Kim II Sung (b. 1912), vied with Rumania’s Nicolae Ceausescu for the most pervasive cult of personality since the death of Stalin. He still does: statues, shrines, generalized idolatry. And yet.