|
The Collapse of Communism
in Europe
A Re-examination Twenty Years After
5.15pm - 7.30pm, 15 October 2009
10 Carlton House
Terrace, London SW1Y 5AH
Convenor and Chair:
Professor Archie Brown FBA, University of
Oxford
The collapse of Communist
systems in Europe was probably the single most important
political event of the second half of the twentieth century.
The decisive year of this transformation was 1989 when Soviet
troops stayed in their barracks as, one by one, the East and
Central European states became independent and non-Communist.
Although the Soviet state did not fall apart until December
1991, most of the defining features of a Communist system also
disappeared there at least two years earlier. For example,
‘democratic centralism’ – the iron discipline which bound
together members of a Communist Party in a rigidly
hierarchical structure – was consciously set aside by the
reformist wing of the Soviet leadership. Party members, with
radically different agendas, competed against one another in
multi-candidate elections for a new legislature, granted real
powers, in the spring of 1989.
Twenty years after these
dramatic changes is a good time to re-examine the fall of
Communism, and not only because of the anniversary. The flood
of memoirs and the opening of the archives of the Communist
era in most of the post-Communist states make it an opportune
moment to reappraise the quite sudden end of regimes which
just a few years earlier had seemed impregnable.
About the
Convenor:
Archie Brown is Emeritus Professor of
Politics at Oxford University where he taught at St Antony’s
College for 34 years. His publications include The Gorbachev
Factor (OUP, 1996), Seven Years that Changed the World:
Perestroika in Perspective (OUP, 2007) and, most recently, The
Rise and Fall of Communism (Bodley Head, 2009).
Speakers
Dr Lilia Shevtsova, Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, Moscow; Professor Ferenc Miszlivetz,
Hungarian Academy of Sciences & University of Western
Hungary; Professor Robert Legvold, Columbia University, New
York; Dr Andrei Grachev, Paris (former presidential press
spokesman for Mikhail Gorbachev); Bridget Kendall, BBC
Diplomatic Correspondent; and Professor Timothy Garton Ash,
University of Oxford (and Guardian columnist)
Attendance
5.15-7.30pm,
followed by a reception. Please note: registration is required
for this event. Please register using the online
booking form. Seats will be allocated on
arrival.
| 
