{"id":175,"date":"2023-03-24T05:27:30","date_gmt":"2023-03-24T09:27:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/europesince1600revised\/chapter\/chapter-22-toward-the-present\/"},"modified":"2025-09-25T10:30:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T14:30:06","slug":"chapter-22-toward-the-present","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/europesince1600revised\/chapter\/chapter-22-toward-the-present\/","title":{"raw":"Chapter 22: Toward the Present","rendered":"Chapter 22: Toward the Present"},"content":{"raw":"

22.1 Introduction<\/h2>\r\nIn 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed. \u00a0Like the proverbial sorcerer\u2019s apprentice who unleashed an enchantment he cannot control, the (last, as it turned out) Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev<\/strong> had begun a series of reforms in 1986 that ultimately resulted in the dismantling of the Soviet state. \u00a0In 1989, the communist regimes of the Eastern Bloc crumbled as it became clear that the USSR would not intervene militarily to prop them up as it had in the past. \u00a0Nationalist independence movements exploded across the USSR and, finally, the entire system fell apart to be replaced by sovereign nations. \u00a0In 1991, Russia itself reemerged as a distinct country in the process rather than just the most powerful part of a larger union.\r\n

In 1992, following the Soviet collapse, the American political theorist Francis Fukuyama published a book entitled The End of History<\/em> and the Last Man<\/em><\/span>. \u00a0Put briefly, The End of History<\/span>\u2019s central argument is that humanity was entering into a new stage in which the essential political and economic questions of the past had been resolved. \u00a0Henceforth, market capitalism and liberal democracy would be conjoined in a symbiotic relationship. \u00a0Human rights would be guaranteed by the political system that also provided the legal framework for a prosperous capitalist economy. \u00a0All of the alternatives had already been tried and failed, after all, from the old order of monarchy and nobility to modern fascism and, as of 1991, Soviet communism. \u00a0Thus, former dictatorships would (if they had not already) join the fold of American-style democracy and capitalism soon enough.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

As it turned out, Fukuyama\u2019s predictions were true for some of the former members of the Eastern Bloc: East and West Germany were reunited, and the countries of Eastern Europe in general, from Romania to newly-independent and separate Slovakia and the Czech Republic, elected democratic governments and sought to join the capitalist western economies. \u00a0So, too, did Russia initially, although almost immediately its economy foundered in the face of the \u201cshock therapy\u201d led by western advisors: the rapid imposition of a market economy and the dismantling of the social safety net that had been the one meaningful benefit of the former Soviet system for ordinary citizens.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

In the long run, however, countries all over the globe in the post-Soviet era were as likely to embrace an economic and political system unanticipated by Fukuyama in 1992: authoritarian capitalism. \u00a0To the surprise of many at the time, there is nothing about market economics that requires a democratic government. \u00a0So long as an authoritarian state was willing to oversee the legal framework, and occasional economic interventions, necessary for capitalism to function, a capitalist economy could thrive despite the absence of civil and political rights. \u00a0This pattern was (and remains) true even of those states that remain nominally \u201ccommunist,\u201d the People\u2019s Republic of China most importantly. \u00a0Likewise, starting with the election of Vladimir Putin<\/strong> in 2000, Russia would soon adopt the model of authoritarian capitalism, with a single political party controlling the state and exercising enormous influence, if not outright control, of the press. \u00a0Meanwhile, in the countries of Central and Western Europe in which battles over economics and politics had finally been resolved in favor of the democracy\/capitalism hybrid in the postwar era, social and cultural problems developed by the 1970s that remain largely unresolved in the present.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n

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Terms for Identification<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

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