ABSTRACT
The collapse of communist systems mattered most to two groups of people. One was those who had lived under such systems. The other comprised Western intellectuals who contemplated communism from afar, among them both its critics and those who continued to harbor affection towards its various incarnations and theories. The collapse of the Soviet "socialist commonwealth" also raises interesting questions about the survival of anti-anticommunism, a deeply ingrained attitude among left-of-centre intellectuals in the West. Why precisely the communist political systems, and the ideas which were used to legitimate them, were so important for Western intellectuals remains one of the most intriguing social-historical questions of our century. Examining the responses to the collapse ought to shed some light on it. A large group of these intellectuals, mostly academics, is made up of people who wish to preserve their core left-of-centre beliefs through a variety of intellectual and psychological means.
