248
PARTISAN REVIEW
other people - in the ethno-national context too.
Lost souls are seeking both new support and loyalties and new tar–
gets for their rancor, which has only grown with the hardships imposed
by the postcommunist economy. Relations with the East have disinte–
grated more quickly than relations with the West can be established.
If
the eastern half of the continent is not to feel lost and succumb to hyste–
ria, it must be offered the prospect of step-by-step integration into
Europe in the foreseeable future despite the relatively minor (yet all but
inevitable) disadvantages involved. For the breakup to have meaning,
there must be a reconstruction plan giving the countries that have se–
ceded a space where they can be reintegrated.
The German model of national socialism cast an ominous shadow
over my youth, the Russian model of a socialist world order over my
mature years. What now? After these German and Russian models of so–
cialism
I
can envisage many people wanting domestic, hOl11e-grown vari–
eties, pure and free of foreign influence, small-scale national socialisms,
predominantly state-run but with an admixture of private, mixed
economIes.
The new super-value is a pure "we": loyal sons of the mother- or fa–
therland cannot imagine more congenial company than one another,
and anyone who befouls his nest by protesting is a traitor and deserves to
have his tongue cut out or be beaten to death . At least that is how most
of the anonymous letter writers would have it.
Whether the authoritarian state (with its intimidation tactics, its
suppression of criticism, its habit of turning opposition into enemy, its
buggings and hiring-firing games, its favoritism and nepotisl11, its tendency
to siphon state funds into the pockets of business partners, its rush to re–
unite politics, culture, and the econol11Y after only half-hearted attempts
at making them autonomous, its revival of the one-party state, its rein–
terpretation of the common good as the good of the party or party fac–
tion, its unctuous exterior and mafia-tough core, its police-immune
posses, its demagoguery of hatred, its anonymous death threats in letters
and phone calls) uses communist or fascist rhetoric is less interesting than
whether it is in fact what we now have, whether all that has happened is
that the flatterers and liars have regrouped. And most interesting of all is
whether the large-scale experiment under way in the region will enable
independent thinkers to take the place of their state-oriented predeces–
sors.
The peoples of Central Europe are following the East Germans'
