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The Price of Ideological Decay
| Article
# : |
12180 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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2 / 1987 |
2,154 Words |
| Author
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W. Wesley McDonald
W. Wesley McDonald is associate professor of political science
at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. |
THE CRISIS OF COMMUNISM
Its Meaning, Origins, and Phases
Rett R. Ludwikowski
Pergamon-Brassey's, 1986
Paperback, 79 pp.
At the beginning of his lucid and insightful study, Rett R. Ludwikowski, a recent émigré from Poland, tells us that he is baffled by the inability of Western intellectuals and the press to understand the degree to which socioeconomic failure presently characterizes life in Marxist countries. "For someone who lived so long under a communist regime, it is quite amazing to discover how little understanding of the crisis of communism there is in the West, and how strong the communist system appears to be to Western observers who still can detect only occasional periods of 'distortions' and 'temporary weakness,'" he observes. "The West is still inclined to view the Soviet system only in terms of its gigantic military potential, and underestimate its internal economic, moral, social and ideological failures and decay."
Numerous examples of this puzzling misperception of alleged Soviet prowess abound in many Western press reports and official pronouncements. Ignoring the vast and compelling evidence to the contrary, many Western observers seem ready to believe reports that Soviet economic and political reform is on the horizon. Too often, though, the basis for such confident prognostications resides in a naïve willingness to accept Soviet disinformation at face value. In 1982, Ludwikowski notes, "the West's optimistic assessment of the 'new era of Soviet reforms' stemmed from tales about Andropov's predilections for jazz,
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