ABSTRACT
For Adriano Guerra, director of the Italian Communist Party's research center for East European Studies, the countries of the region, without exception though in somewhat different ways, were undergoing a profound systemic crisis. Emphasis on "consumerism," in Guerra's view had both highlighted the range of differences among the East European countries and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and at the same time helped to obscure the elements of the regional crisis. When speaking of the moral void and of the political apathy of the populations in general, Guerra noted that it was in the first place the men of the regimes themselves that had rejected politics, its values, and its instruments. Instead, they "often promoted the 'Westernization' of the shop windows--that is, a distorted policy of consumer supplies--in order to hold back the demand for reforms and participation." Guerra began his third article by discussing the thorny question of the "limits of tolerability" in Soviet relations with East European countries.
