Passages of the Russian and Eastern Europe Left

Abstract

First, we must track the many differing political and ideological trends and configurations of trends in the different Communist Party leaderships in the 1980s for these profoundly shaped the subsequent course of left politics during and after the collapse of the Soviet Bloc. Secondly, and the other side of the coin of Western images of 'civil society' against 'totalitarianism', we must examine the degree to which large parts of civil society remained attached to the values of socialism and indeed (though to a lesser extent) to the Communist Parties within the region. And thirdly, the directions taken by the various post-Communist Parties have also been shaped quite strongly by the parties' perception of the new geopolitical situation in which they have found themselves. We will explore all these themes with reference to three sub-regions in what used to be called Eastern Europe: East Central Europe, known often today as the Visegrad countries; South Eastern Europe, particularly Bulgaria and Romania (leaving to one side the tragic special case of Yugoslavia); and Russia and Ukraine amongst the former Soviet Republics.