ABSTRACT
For a few fleeting moments, critics in the West heralded the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe as “the end of history,” insisting that capitalist and liberal ideas had prevailed over rival ideologies once and for all. The victory cries of philosopher Francis Fukuyama and like-minded Western conservatives, however, were premature. In 1989, history did not perish, nor was it reborn—rather it was freed from the constraints and calculated distortions of the communist systems.
