Why don’t people celebrate the end of communism?

Here is a very good point I never thought of before. I was told by my colleague there that a right wing Italian newspaper recently complained:

“Why do people not celebrate the fall of communism in 1989?”

A very good question, though the answer may not suit them. The various events around the so called ‘fall of communism’ in Eastern Europe are 30 years ago this year. But there are no large scale parties or celebrations about that at all… even though people still celebrate things like Thanksgiving and Guy Fawkes day from much further back in time.

Some of the key events happened exactly at this time: in June 1989 Solidarity claimed victory in Polish parliamentary elections, and in July Gorbachev announced that each country in the Soviet zone ‘could take its own path to socialism’. Earlier in the spring the Hungarian Communists renounced it’s ‘leading role’ and proposed a multi-party political system. In November 1989 the Berlin Wall was opened and the Czechoslovakian Communist government resigned.

Out of all of that and more only the fall of the Berlin wall is widely remembered. Even then it seems mostly because its a simple symbol of change that everyone can easily visualise. And because it symbolises the uniting of a country, rather than the fall of communism.

I suggest that the fact that there are no such celebrations perhaps indicates that people know there is something false and empty about it. This centers around two…