Original scientific paper

The Disintegration of Communist Federations

Branko Caratan ; Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia

Abstract

The disitegration of Communist societies is a continuation of the processes that were interrupted when the Communist Parties came to power with their programs of radical changes aimed at erasing all the social relationships that had been developed within a civil society. The author does not contest the thesis that the development of bourgeois countries is a historical rule but he stresses that the problem of post-Communism cannot be solved by simply imitating everything that there is in the West. The countries of the European East cannot stride over the phases that they did not pass through earlier; it is evident that they will have to undergo the same historical processes in their specific manner. The phase in which national states are formed cannot be avoided and it does carry certain risks. Potential conflict situations cannot be evaded by stopping the processes put into motion by the fall of Communism because this would produce an opposite effect. The author contests the opinion of the advocates of large integrative wholes who assert that the Communist federations have disintegrated as a consequence of the activities of the nationalists and the national movements. He shows that disintegration represented an iseparable part of the dissolution of the old political order.

Keywords

Hrčak ID:

112005

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/112005

Publication date:

1.3.1993.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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