Schedule information
Event	Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of Communism
When	Thursday, December 3, 2009 at 12:30pm
Where	Intercultural Center McGhee Library, ICC 3rd Floor
Ticket/RSVP	This event requires a ticket or RSVP
Event details
Details	In his new book 'Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of Communist Establishment,' Stephen Kotkin puts forth that Communism was destroyed not by the heroism of 'civil society' or courageous intellectuals, but by the Communist establishments - by their mismanagement, incompetence, and decadence. Could most of what we know about the downfall of Communism be wrong? Could it be that 'the people' did not bring down the malevolent regimes? Could all the books about popular revolt, about the heroism of 'civil society,' and about the courageous intellectuals, be borderline fairy tales? In his new book Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of Communist Establishment, Stephen Kotkin--Rosengarten Professor of Modern and Contemporary History, and Professor of International Affairs, Princeton University--puts forth that Communism was destroyed by the Communist establishments - by their mismanagement, incompetence, and decadence. East Germany counted a few hundred dissidents, while East Germany's secret police, the Stasi, numbered 91,000 operatives and staff, not even including informers. Could hundreds of dissidents, most of whom were pro-socialist, have brought down such a police state? Romania had virtually no dissidents (excluding a few in Parisian exile), but its dictatorship counted nearly 40,000 members of its infamous Securitate police. And yet, the Romanian regime collapsed over ten days. How? In Eastern Europe only devoutly Catholic Poland had a sizable opposition, but even there, the critical steps toward system liquidation were taken, unwittingly, by the establishment, or what could be called the 'uncivil society.' These regimes proved to be Ponzi schemes - dependent on Western loans in hard currency that they could not repay, except by taking ever more hard currency loans (the kiss of debt). When confronted with this problem, the massive uncivil society did . . . nothing. Just months after the new Kremlin leader Mikhail Gorbachev removed the backstop of Soviet force (the so-called Brezhnev doctrine) in 1989, the East European Communist regimes collapsed in political bank runs. The lessons for today's market-economy countries are surprising. Stephen Kotkin joined Princeton University's faculty in 1989. He has directed Princeton's Russian and Eurasian Studies Program since 1995. His books include Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse 1970-2000 (Oxford, 2001; new edition 2008) and Worlds Together, Worlds Apart: A History of the Modern World from the Mongol Empire to the Present, coauthored with six others (W.W. Norton, 2002; new edition 2008). His current work focuses on 'uncivil society' (the communist establishment), the conundrums of authoritarian politics, and empire. Professor Kotkin writes reviews and essays for The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, Financial Times, the Times Literary Supplement, and is the regular book reviewer for the New York Times Sunday Business section. He also serves as a consultant to the World Pension Forum, an association for institutional investors, and to foundations such as George Soros' Open Society Institute and the Ford Foundation. He is a former chairman of the editorial board at Princeton University Press. He received his Ph.D. from University of California Berkeley.
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Contact	ceres@georgetown.edu
Sponsors	Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies
Web site	For more information, see http://www12.georgetown.edu/sfs/rsvp/index.cfm?Action=View&EventID=2610
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