A Europe of Disenchantment

The originality of the articles in this volume can be found in the search, through the examination of specific cases, for the profound motivations and origins of the process of progressive deconstruction of ideas and society that led to the end of the Soviet bloc and Yugoslavia. At the same time the enormous problems (nationalist tensions and disintegration of these countries, and the destruction of welfare), are examined. These problems subsequently emerged to generate a sort of “cruel nostalgia” for the past, not only in the East. The failure of neoliberalism laid bare all the contradictions that had accumulated over the course of these years in European societies, attacked by corruption and the arbitrary and oligarchist management of the economy, while the Chinese communist dictatorship ended up being the model for organizing labour. This has provoked extreme rightist populist tendencies but also a strong reawakening of that Zivilcourage that in its own time led to the mobilization of the masses against the governments of the countries of “real socialism”.  This Europe, and particularly its youth, no longer believes in the current ruling classes, which have reduced democracy to a mere formality, to empty noise, and from disenchantment is rapidly moving towards anger and indignation.