ABSTRACT
Since the mid-1950s, East Europe's dissidents have been re-examining the cardinal precepts and principles of Marxism-Leninism and Soviet Communism, while undergoing a process of profound alienation from the Party-state. The "modern" form of revisionism-reformism often entails some reinterpretation of Marxism in general, and a reconstruction of Leninism in its Soviet variant in particular. Political dissidents have increasingly adopted and pursued new strategies outside the revisionist-reformist framework, seeing little need or prospect for transforming the ruling Parties from within, or in devising any workable "new model of communism." Workers' alienation is actually rooted in unfavorable economic conditions, and their feelings of powerlessness and under-representation in meaningful political institutions. Some analysts have also pointed out that workers tend to voice protests about material issues because "they are safer for dissatisfied elements in the population to articulate without immediate repression, than political ones."
