The God That Failed

Communism is dying in Eastern Europe, faster in some countries than in others, but surely and irretrievably it is dying.

It is dying of a multitude of ailments, including institutionalized cruelties, deceits and corruption. Most of all it is dying of the congenital defect of rampant self-delusion: Communist ideology rests on the fallacy that ancient pragmatic laws of economic activity can be replaced by a philosopher’s theory, and on the conceit that much of human behavior can be radically altered through relentless indoctrination. “Communism,” the distinguished Czechoslovak economist Valtr Komarek said the other day, “is nonsense.” This is as succinct a definition as one could ask for, and as appropriate an epitaph as the system deserves.

The great transformation taking place in Eastern Europe is remarkable in its own right and remarkable for the manner of its achievement. As The Curtain Rises, a special section in today’s Times shows, the breathtaking movement away from communism is essentially the result of the courageous efforts of the people themselves and it was achieved virtually without bloodshed.

Things might well have been different if Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev had not provided encouragement for benign change. But even if Gorbachev had tried, like Leonid Brezhnev in 1968 or Nikita Khrushchev in 1956, to use Red Army tanks to quash Eastern Europe’s protesters and reformers, he would only have been able to delay the inevitable processes of revolutionary change. And this is yet another remarkable aspect of what this year has brought: the acknowledgement by Eastern Europe’s Communist leaders, first in Poland and Hungary, then in Czechoslovakia and East Germany, now (grudgingly) even in backwater Bulgaria, that after more than 40 years of trying to bend facts to fit ideology, it must at last be recognized that things simply don’t work. That a readiness to acknowledge the system’s utter failure has long lurked just below the surface, and that a profound loss of faith has long bedeviled those at the very top, was made apparent both by the suddenness of communism’s collapse and by the visible demoralization of its leaders. As revolutions go--and some go on for a very long time indeed--it took only the merest nudge to send communism toppling.

To be sure, it’s not over yet. Free multiparty elections to legitimize the transfer of power have yet to take place in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and East Germany--to say nothing of Bulgaria or Romania, the brutally administered fiefdom of the corrupt Ceausescu family. Those who would replace the Communists in Eastern Europe must show more than that they can master the mechanics of government--not an easy thing after being denied any share of power for so long. More importantly, they must prove they know how to organize the development of modern and humane market-oriented economies. The states of Eastern Europe will need a lot of international help as they transform themselves. Most of all they will need the patience and tolerance of their own peoples who, after suffering through so much for so long, now face the challenge of enduring more years of wrenching change.