Delusions of “Shock Therapy”

Three years ago, everything seemed much clearer: the Berlin Wall had collapsed, and with it communism in Eastern Europe. The failed coup in Moscow vastly expanded the terrain—psychological as well as geographic— of that collapse. But now, we live in the era of “post-communism,” an odd term that serves as foundation for speculation, hope, and confusion among (and about) more than four hundred million people exiting a system that a half century ago proclaimed itself the future o...