Scholars upon occasion have spoken of the “crisis” of the arts in Reformation Germany. It has become increasingly clear, however, that such terminology, when left unqualified, may be excessively ambiguous, and perhaps even misleading. At least one influential historian is arguing today that the true crisis situation is that where a threat is followed by a final regaining of strength, or where there is a “successful resistance or adaptation to a vital challenge.”

The emergence and general acceptance of polycentrism in the communist world since the late 1950's has brought the difficulty of defining communism in either ideological, organizational, or programmatic terms out into the open. That difficulty had always existed but had been concealed since the early 1920's largely by the impact of the successful Bolshevik Revolution and by the subsequent bolshevization and Soviet domination of most non-Russian communist groups and movements through the Comintern and the Cominform. The Western cold-war theory of the monolithic nature of a Moscow-centered and -controlled expansion of world communism has perpetuated a widespread identification of communism as such with bolshevism.