VLADIMIR TISMANEANU
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because they were non-teleological and non-ideological. Actually, they
were anti-utopian precisely because they refused to pursue any predeter–
mined, foreordained blueprint. With the exception of some nebulous
concepts like "civil society," "return to Europe," and "popular sovereign–
ty," these revolutions occurred in the absence of ideology.
In
spite of its hazy connotations or precisely because of them, the idea
of civil society energized large human groups and allowed them to pass the
system-imposed threshold of fear. What succumbed during that unique
moment of human emancipation was the most vainglorious utopia in his–
tory. Indeed, what came to an end in 1989 was not history, but rather the
oracular pretense that history has one sense and that a certain group has
the episternic privilege to identifY it and impose its conclusions, as formu–
lated by one or two philosophers, on all humanity.
Communism, as formulated by Marx and Lenin, had sacralized histo–
ry, turned it into a myth in the name of which all sacrifices were justified.
At the very core of Marxism one finds a millennialist mythology, a social
dream about a perfect world where the ancient schizoid conflict between
man and society, between essence and existence, would have been tran–
scended. The future-oriented spectre of communism is telling humanity
that a Golden Age is about to arrive and the leap from the valley of tears
to the ci ty of light and bliss can be undertaken in this world, as an ultimate
historical convulsion. More than anything else, Marxism represented a
spectacular invi tation to human beings to engage in a frantic search for the
City of God. This human adventure has failed, but the deep needs for
which Marxism tried to provide an answer have not come to an end.
Now that the Leninist order has been overthrown, the moral landscape
of post-communism is one marred with moral confusion, venomous
hatreds, unsatisfied desires, and endless bickerings. This is the bewildering,
often terrifYing territory on which political mythologies make a return.
Fascism, for instance, can make a comeback because, as we know from cat–
astrophic experience in the twentieth century, it represents a paroxysmal
answer to the discomfitures of modernity. But post-Cold War Fascism will
not be an exact replica of the inter-war mythology.
People of the former communist world, from Tbilisi to Prague, and
from Vladivostok to Tirana, have been exposed to the same Leninist
experiment. One may of course smile at the naivete of Sidney and
Beatrice Webb, who thought that Sovietism really represented a new civ–
ilization. At the same time, one cannot deny that it symbolized an ensemble
of habits, norms, attitudes and emotions deeply inculcated in the individ–
ual's psyche. Once the old regime was overthrown, euphoria reigned
supreme. Then people realized how powerful the cultural legacies of
Leninism were and that the pre-Leninist past for many of these countries
