At the beginning of 1990, the ideology of laissez-faire had made a triumphal return to the Polish political scene, and nothing appeared likely to disturb the self-assurance of the neoliberals. By now, however, there are increasing signs of disarray, crisis, …
Following the referendum on the union held last March, President Mikhail Gorbachev and his supporters claimed that the outcome demonstrated that a majority of the people in the Soviet Union wanted to maintain the union. Putting aside the ambiguity in …
Though it lasted only sixteen months, the magazine Seven Arts (1916-17) defined an important cultural moment in the United States. Distinctively American but cosmopolitan, modernist in commitment but democratic and constructive in spirit, Seven Arts was, in the phrase of …
Dear Jirina, In June 1990, we sat in your Prague apartment sipping tea as a soft summer breeze floated through opened windows. I asked you endless questions about the experiences of female dissidents and the problems facing Czechoslovakian women after …
Two hot-selling, over-analyzed gossip books— Julia Phillips’s You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again and Kitty Kelley’s Nancy Reagan: The Unauthorized Biography—give pause to consider the peculiar symbiosis that exists between those who acquire power in our society and …
David Miller’s “A Vision of Market Socialism” (Summer 1991) is a thought-provoking contribution to Dissent’s ongoing discussion of this topic. He deserves our appreciation for the way in which he specifies five basic socialist values and then defends his model …
The Founding Fathers were dubious about democracy. They thought that most of their fellow citizens knew too little to have a voice in political decisions. Writing a Constitution for a country in which few men, and fewer women, were educated …
Securus iudicat orbis terrarum, says a maxim of Roman law; which means, loosely translated: the New York Times, the New York Review of Books and the Times Literary Supplement can’t all be wrong. Isaiah Berlin is a certified sage, an …
Multiculturalism is in the air. The recent movement in American education—both in the schools and in colleges and universities— to incorporate into the curriculum works from non-Western cultures has aroused an exceptional amount of public debate. A cover story in …
Since the fall from power of the ruling parties in Eastern Europe during the amazing events of autumn 1989, most commentators in the West and the East have proclaimed the death of communism. If communism is defined as consisting of …
Nowhere in Europe did the Gulf War provoke so explosive a public debate as in unified Germany. It was not Germany’s reluctance to contribute military forces to the coalition (deployment of troops outside of NATO territory is prohibited by the …
It’s probably unfair, but I would like Nicholas Lemann’s account of the causes and consequences of the great black migration better if it were not so widely and extravagantly praised. It is, in some ways, a very good book. Well-written …
The collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe reopens the question whether there is any form of socialism that might be adopted, with popular support, in the advanced societies. The experience of communism sug- gests, fairly unequivocally, that such a …
In mid-March a conference on the subject “From Totalitarianism to Democracy” was held under the auspices of the Academy of Social Sciences in Moscow. Unlike the renowned Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Social Sciences is a teaching and research …
The upheavals that toppled the East European regimes in 1989 exposed the realities of the communist system. Denied for decades, especially in the Third World, the truth was finally exposed. Because it was the enemy of the old colonial powers, …
