ABSTRACT
Transitions from authoritarian rule are conditioned or shaped by many national factors. Reemergence of the civil society may be perceived as growth of the "spontaneous order," replacing the imposed disorder of the bureaucratic anarchy that is built into the authoritarian, one-party systems. The old elites had collective privileges and opportunities but no property rights. But while launching economic reform, they have attempted to convert their collective privilege into individual property right, showing little interest in the development of political freedoms and civil rights. Marxism-Leninism ceased to be the most important factor in the legitimation of communist regimes. Beginning in the 1960s, teleological legitimation was progressively replaced by a pragmatic and authoritarian conservatism that attempted to legitimate itself through a pragmatic and functional pseudoideology playing on national feelings and geopolitical realism. But the pragmatic ideology of consumerism is much more conducive to the protection of human rights than is any attempt to play on national feelings and geopolitical realism.
