A New Political Situation: Revolutionary Changes in the World

The recent political changes in Europe are so extensive, indeed, so astonishing that all of us have “fallen behind” in our thinking. It’s unavoidable. So let me here put down some quite obvious points, with no pretense to originality or comprehensiveness, in order to provide a basis for discussion. I will number them for easy reference.

The changes now occurring in the Soviet Union—these constitute the enabling basis for the changes in Eastern Europe—are of a magnitude such as no one predicted. There is still, thank heaven, surprise in history. Theories of totalitarianism that were valuable or suggestive a few decades ago are of little use today. That a proposal for a multiparty regime should even be discusse...