The crises of East European communism: The grand failure of manipulated participation

Abstract

Research on crises in European Leninist regimes has focused largely on the process of political disequilibrium that preceded outbreaks of social discontent, on the crisis‐resolution role played by the Soviet leadership, and, more recently, on the fundamental flaws in the Marxist project. A process model of crisis and change that focuses on the later stages of crisis ‐ in particular, efforts to restore political equilibrium ('resynchronization') through the expansion of participation ‐ suggests that one of the great failures of communist party rule in Eastern Europe was the inability to resynchronize following crisis. Rulers' stress on post‐crisis political participation as a form of resynchronization proved expedient in the short run but counter‐productive over the longer term. An examination of six systemic and five non‐systemic crises that occurred in Eastern Europe during 1953–81, with particular attention paid to the efficacy of the methods used by ruling coalitions to fit allocation to demands, indic...