The Communist Mindset

Perhaps the most important theme of How We Survived Communism is that communist social institutions are correlated with a communist mindset and that the communist mindset outlives the destruction of communist institutions. When communism fell in the late eighties and early nineties, many in Eastern Europe expected dramatic cultural and economic change. While some countries did get better off, on the whole, things improved more slowly than expected. Slavenka attributes this to a continuing communist mindset. The communist mindset cannot expect life to improve. It has been so disappointed for so long that it sees only danger in hoping for a better life. It is the mindset of the exhausted, those exhausted by wars, poverty and tyranny. It is also the mindset of the terrified. Under communism, many were terrified by the possibility of their family being removed by secret police, of being reported by a...