Category Archives: Periodical

Events in Eastern Europe could revitalize leftist scholarship

The failure of the East European (Russian) model is not the failure of the left wing, with the disappearance of the bloodthirsty ghost it is the right wing which looses its arguments. At American universities a new upswing of the left can be expected. The peoples of Eastern Europe long for a welfare social society rather than the model of the existing capitalism.

The original article is in The Chronicle of Higher Education April 1990.

The actuality of Berdaiev

Berdiaiev's book, as it can be termed as a prophesy concerning many elements of the Russian model, has become very popular among Hungarian readers interested in political sciences. The reviewer – while acknowledging a number of merits of Berdiaiev's work, underlining many of his productive ideas (from the mutual Utopia of the opposition of Slavofil-Western ideas, to the role of the anarchic-egalitarian tradition, cultural backwardness, the far too abstract handling of the proletariate by Russian marxism etc.)- calls the attention to the falsifications of the study. This especially applies to those points where today Stalinism is washed together with bolshevism and certain trends of bolshevism with the whole of bolshevism. Finally, he calls Berdiaiev himself to testify and decide that what has been realised or what failed in the Soviet Union was not socialism.