ABSTRACT
My purpose is to recall briefly those hundred days that shook Europe and altered the balance of the world; to ask what collapsed and why; to survey what happened in this area in the last decade and, finally, to put the question about the meaning, the lesson of this dramatic change. Did it announce, as our establishment repeats relentlessly and successfully, the final funeral of socialism and capitalist eternity, or, on the contrary, as I shall argue, did it remind us that, ultimately, people make their history and, therefore, every social formation, including our own, is transient?
