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The Prospects for Change in Eastern Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Andrzej Korbonski
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Writing some ten years ago about the changing political situation in the Soviet Union, Allen Kassof made the astute observation, “Although liberalization tells something about where the Soviet system has come from, it does not say very much about where it is going. To say that the system is being liberalized is like walking away backward from a receding reference point, a procedure that gives too little information about what lies on the road ahead.” It is clear that this statement applies with even greater force to Eastern Europe—even if we were to substitute “change” for “liberalization.” Anyone reckless enough to write about the prospects for change in Eastern Europe is faced with an almost impossible task, certainly a more difficult one than for the Soviet Union, or for that matter China, where at least there is, or was, a single reference point—be it Stalinism or Maoism, totalitarianism or the “administered society.”

Type
Discussion
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , June 1974 , pp. 219 - 239
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1974

References

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31. Ibid., p. 479.

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35. Personal interviews in Prague in the spring of 1967.

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38. Personal interviews in Eastern Europe in the summer of 1971.

39. One example of a more liberal attitude in this respect was provided recently by the Gierek regime, which apparently lifted censorship from two Polish publications —Trybuna Ludu, the party's daily organ, and Polityka, a well-known political weekly. Also the regime’s new policy of granting exit visas to intellectuals critical of it may be interpreted as a step in the same direction.

40. Triska and Johnson, “Political Development, ” p. 46.

41. Andrzej, Korbonski, “Comparing Liberalization Processes in Eastern Europe : A Preliminary Analysis,” Comparative Politics, 4, no. 2 (January 1972) : 231–49 Google Scholar, and “Liberalization in Eastern Europe : A Comparative View” (unpublished paper).

42. For a different view see Gitelman, “Beyond Leninism, ” pp. 28-29.

43. One such paradigm is suggested by Huntington in his article “The Change to Change, ” p. 316.

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