Was China's 'Leninist capitalism' the main beneficiary of the Berlin Wall's collapse?
On the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Freedom House has launched a new web feature highlighting the changes in freedom in the former communist world. Freedom Before and After the Wall includes a retrospective essay; charts and graphs; a series of maps from 1989, 1999, and 2009 reflecting the progress of freedom; and chapters from Freedom in the World from those years examining the emerging state of political rights and civil liberties in a sampling of key countries.
“The dramatic events of 1989, and the equally dramatic Soviet unraveling in 1991, are remembered as the final chapter of 20th-century totalitarianism and the beginning of an era of democratic ascendancy, said Arch Puddington, Freedom House’s director of research. “But as we now know, 1989 produced several narratives, not all of which had the optimistic ending that would have been predicted at the time.”
The last two decades has produced “an ever widening chasm” between Central and Eastern Europe and the former non-Baltic Soviet Union, with the former now consolidated democracies and the latter largely consolidated autocracies. For more information, check out Freedom in the World 2009 and Nations in Transit 2009.
Timothy Garton-Ash believes Europe has failed to seize the opportunities presented by the Wall’s collapse. The real beneficiary of the Soviet bloc’s implosion, he suggests, is the Chinese hybrid of Leninist capitalism. An “emerging superpower with $2 trillion of reserves, holding the US in a financial half-nelson”, China’s communist party learned the lessons of 1989
This is a fragile superpower, to be sure, with many internal tensions and contradictions, and too little freedom, but still [contrary to what some might contend] a formidable competitor for western-style liberal democratic capitalism. Far more formidable, incidentally, than backward-looking, militant Islamism, which is a real threat but not a serious ideological competitor.
Looking for weekend reading? Bookforum has a useful set of links to a wide range of views from Left and Right on the meaning of 1989:
From NPQ, an interview with Francis Fukuyama, a board member of the National Endowment for Democracy, on the “End of History”, 20 years later. Winds of Change from the East: A look at how Poland and Hungary led the way in 1989. Michael Lejman (Memphis): The Left Reacts: French Leftists and the 1989 Revolutions in Eastern Europe. The first chapter from 1989: The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe by Mary Elise Sarotte (and more). From Reason, a review of The Year That Changed the World: The Untold Story Behind the Fall of the Berlin Wall by Michael Meyer (and an excerpt) and The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War by James Mann. A review of Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment by Stephen Kotkin [note: he is dismissive of the role of civil society, dissidents and active opposition to communism: it was all due to economic and other structural factors, don't you know?] . From Dissent, what is to be learned? Mitchell Cohen on thinking about 1989. From Foreign Affairs, the suicide of the East: A review essay on 1989 and the Fall of Communism. A review essay on the revolutions of 1989; and an interview with Mikhail Gorbachev. 1989 and change in our time: Old-fashioned revolutions of the mass against the oppressors are out — history now delivers revolutionary normalisations. A look back on the unravelling of the Soviet system and the unlikely staying power of a once-ridiculed worldview (at least the sensible parts of it). What was communism? Fred Halliday investigates. Is the word “communism” forever doomed? Alain Badiou wants to know. From The New Criterion, Anthony Daniels on the intellectual irresponsibility of Soviet sympathizers. Daniel Johnson on why it was a rare privilege to have a footnote in history at the fall of the Berlin Wall.
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