THE COLLAPSE of Stalinism was a victory for genuine socialism, the idea of workers power, but more often than not, the opposite conclusion was drawn
THE COLLAPSE OF STALINISM TEN YEARS LATER, part of Socialist Summer School 2001
Friday, June 15, 520 S. Ashland, Congress Plaza Hotel, Downtown Chicago.
OVER TEN years ago, Stalinism began to fall apart with mass demonstrations tearing down the Berlin Wall that separated East and West Germany. By the end of 1991, Stalinist regimes that seemed like all powerful dictatorships for decades were overthrown in East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania - and in the USSR itself, which then broke apart into 15 new republics.
BETWEEN 1961 and 1989, East German security forces murdered more than 450 people trying to escape to West Germany, illustrating the distance between their socialism and the vision of workers democracy that had inspired the Russian Revolution in 1917.
THE COLLAPSE of Stalinism was a victory for genuine socialism, the idea of workers power, but more often than not, the opposite conclusion was drawn. Commentators, on the left and the right treated 1989 as the triumph of capitalism and the death of Marxism.
WHAT DOES the fall of the Stalinist dictatorships mean for workers struggles and the fight for socialism today? Come to this talk to discuss and debate the implications of the popular revolts that ended decades of Stalinist rule.
Congress Plaza Hotel, 520 S. Michigan Ave., Downtown Chicago,
FOR MORE INFORMATION e-mail
socialistsummerschool2001 (at) hotmail.com, visit
www.socialistsummerschool.org, call 773 583 8665.
AND CHECK OUT THESE OTHER DISCUSSIONS AND MEETINGS AT SOCIALIST SUMMER SCHOOL 2001:
South Africa After Apartheid - Social Democracy Today - Is There An Energy Shortage? - The Art and Politics of Diego Rivera - Abortion Rights and Womens Liberation - Who Controls the Media - The Limits of Anarchism - China After Tiananmen Square - Rosa Luxemburgs Reform or Revolution - From Civil Rights to Black Power in the 1960s - The American Injustice System - McCarthyism and the Cold War - Can the Left Unite? - The Roots of Gay Oppression - The Industrial Workers of the World - The New Sexism: It Isnt Just Ironic - and more!
Sponsored by the International Socialist Organization (
www.internationalsocialist.org) and the Center for Economic Research and Social Change