ABSTRACT
Really existing socialism – what I shall often call the Soviet-type system on the grounds that it ‘extended beyond the Soviet Union as a result of Soviet military presence’ (Feher et al. 1983: ix) – was said by its enthusiasts to be the ultimate way of ensuring a complete and total social freedom. The system which the Soviet Union exported in the years immediately after the collapse of Nazism was intended to reconcile the previously different concerns of the collective and the individual. But the system was overthrown, or at least given the final push before it selfdestructed, by people who struggled in the name of freedom. One definition of freedom challenged another definition. The alleged highpoint of European history was seen by its subjects to be one of the two nadirs in the modern history of oppression.
