After the Failure of the Soviet Experience
Summary
Khachik S. Der Ghugassian
The article proposes a critical look at the different ideological understandings and experiences of socialism after the fall of the Soviet Union and the failure of the historical experience of the so-called “Real Socialism” and the building of a Communist future for humanity. It starts analyzing the post-Cold War dominant paradigm of the “End of History,” which paradoxically sustains the forthcoming of a de-ideologized world but assumes the guiding role of a one unique model of political and economic development. The article then compares the “right-turn” of European Social-Democracy with the rise of the center-left in Latin America highlighting the crisis of the first and the reasons of the re-emergence of the latter within a clear engagement with democracy instead of praising, as in the past, revolutionary utopias. In Latin America, we are witnessing democracy opening the way to socialism. Based upon the comparative analysis of Europe and Latin America, the study concludes with a broad reflection about the perspective of a socialist reformulation in the Eurasian continent. Thus, it sustains that the pursuit of a socially just order in former Soviet countries should aim at the strengthening of a middle-class and civil society to start de-centralizing power and wealth concentration and system change instead of aspiring to become government.