Fall Of Communism Analysis

During the year 1989 a major and unexpected event shocked the foundation of the world: Communism fell in Eastern Europe. This was a result of a series of revolutions closely linked which occurred in several countries in the Soviet bloc. Particularly with the case of Stephen Kotkin, revolution is defined as a ‘forcible overthrow of a government or social order, in favour of a new system’. Whereas Timothy Garton Ash discusses the particular events in Eastern Europe in terms of ‘refolution’, that is the combination of revolution and reform, rather than what he calls the ‘very loose’ term of revolution. Deciding which term is more appropriate for which event can indicate whether the people or the individual governments can be attributed to causing the fall of Communism. Despite general consensus that the responsibility of the revolutions were largely attributed to the people, the Communist regimes played a significant role as well. The question then arises whether one was more important than the other.

On one side there are the people. Kotkin refers to them as the ‘civil society’, a group of people ‘imagining’ themselves as opposition when in fact they did not contribute anything to the fall of the Communist regimes. In contrast to this, he labels the other side as ‘uncivil society’, the Communist regimes. They were a society because they contained a social ranking, shared an ideology and lived the same lives. This is seen as more important because the fall occurred within the sphere of the governments. As a consequence of the opposition not existing, only in a realm of fiction, the only way Communism fell was due to the Communist