THE DESTINY OF THE SO-CALLED SOCIALIST SOCIETIES OF EASTERN Europe is one of the great questions of our time. The communist counter-reformation may plunge Eastern Europe into the same kind of somnolent torpor which the original Counter-reformation imposed on Southern Europe, and from which it has not yet really recovered. The abortive Prague Spring will remain a good source of evidence for what countervailing forces are available, which could possibly save Eastern Europe from such a fate. It was a revolution of intellectuals, a fact which may perhaps have always augured ill for its final outcome, though it was a hopeful sign for the quality of its literary and scholarly accompaniment.