Unlike the other East European revolutions, the Romanian one was extremely violent. It resulted not only in the replacement of a despised ruling family but in the dissolution of all party and government structures. But the drastic nature of these …
Europe is today a new-old world. It is a continent in transitions that until recently were deemed inconceivable. Cold warriors, confident in their rigid concepts, told us not long ago that a declining Western Europe, losing its backbone and faced …
For the Democratic party, business has been a central political dilemma, ranking just behind race as the source of a policy conundrum pitting elite reformers against a working- and lower-middle-class electorate hungry for material improvement. It is corporate America that …
The Russian Republic’s section of the Union of Soviet Writers has become known as an enclave of nationalist xenophobia. A partial transcript, printed in Ogonek 48, 1989, of its sixth plenary session demonstrated this orientation. The following text combines cited …
Here are two influential Soviet reformers, known for their fundamental criticisms of the society and their desire to move toward some form of democratic socialism. Yuri Afanasyev is a historian and member of the Supreme Soviet; Tatyana Zaslayskaya is a …
It was a warm fall Sunday afternoon. A day for watching football on television or going for a walk in the still-green Virginia countryside. The last thing the security guards at the Pittston Coal Company’s Moss 3 preparation plant were …
Yugoslavia entered on the long, crooked road to political and economic reforms as far back as 1948-50. Starting without previous signposts, the Yugoslav Communists have been on it for four decades; thus, their experiences and errors are relevant to both …
The familiar debate about the prospects for capitalism and socialism has taken a sharp turn as a result of three new trends transforming the politics of the world. In brief, these are the collapse of the communist dictatorships in Eastern …
Paul Fussell is a professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, a specialist in eighteenth century literature who first came to attention outside the academy in 1975 with the publication of The Great War and Modern Memory. That book …
The New York Times missed Mitch’s death on August 1, 1989 and so did nearly all the liberal and left publications that share the interracial ideals of the old Southern Tenant Farmers Union (STFU). He died, as he lived, on …
We bring together here several short comments on the remarkable events in Eastern Europe. As usual, each writer expresses an individual opinion—Eds. In one of the earliest issues of Dissent (Summer 1954) we published an essay by Isaac Deutscher on …
Long-time readers of the New Yorker may recall cartoon-style ads for the now-defunct Philadelphia Bulletin. An odd little man in a crowd points in horror at some impending disaster while all around him remain oblivious, absorbed in the Bulletin. There …
I remember the evening I discovered that Edith Tarcov was an unusual woman. An article I’d written for Dissent had been accepted but not yet set in type. One night at about ten I received a phone call from Edith. …
Bands of roughly dressed country folk were marching—or sliding—along the icy streets of Sofia with the Bulgarian tricolor in their hands. Their placards denounced the “decision of December 29,” called for a general strike, and demanded a referendum on “the …
As immigration swelled at the end of the nineteenth century, the nation’s “real” Americans dug in their heels and created an oddly romantic and destructive notion of democracy called the “melting pot theory,” which they applied relentlessly to immigrant schoolchildren. …
