European Communists & European Defense

European Communist parties, for threescore years Stalin’s vanguard, seem to be discovering democracy. Few Americans have noticed and fewer still are willing to trust the change. With reason—and yet, if genuine, the change could mark the end of an era, profoundly affecting Europe’s conservative stance.

Europe’s basic conservatism in recent decades has been largely a paradoxical product of the Communist parties’ commitment to despotism. In Europe, as in America,...