"Alexander Tomov. The Fourth Civilisation (англ.)[V]" - читать интересную книгу автора

demagogy and propaganda which I have ever encountered. We believed in the
glorious future of communism, just like others believed in life after death.
We were unable to compare our daily lives with anyone and with anything
because we all watched the same television, listened to the same radio and
read the same newspapers in which the truth was written by other people.
In the 1960's and 1970's there were many people who did not believe and
who heretically opposed the aggression of the regime. However, the majority
of the population knew nothing of this. In Bulgaria there had been none of
the civil unrest of the Polish workers, the Hungarian uprising and the
Prague spring. It was only late in the 1970's that we began to realise that
perhaps things were not as they should be and it was possible to live in a
different way, that Eastern Europe was not the proponent of supreme human
progress. One reason for this was the opening up of Bulgaria to the Western
World, the appearance of new audio-visual media and the expansion of
scientific and technological exchanges. We were then able to see another
model and were able to make comparisons. Another reason was the admission by
the existing regime of the need to improve economic mechanisms and their
recognition of the importance of primary stimuli.
However, even then in the 1970's and 1980's, even during the years of
perestroika under Gorbachev, when the entire truth about Stalin became
public knowledge, our notions of the future were limited to the idea of
convergence. What happened in 1989 and especially what happened subsequently
was totally unexpected by everyone, both in the East and the West. I am not
afraid to admit this because I know very well that even the best political
scientists in the world and the academic centres specialising in Eastern
European studies had no idea of the impact and the diversity of the changes
which were taking place at the end of the 1980's. Even Gorbachev himself did
not expect it. The chain reactions of turbulent demonstrations which took
place in the whole of Eastern Europe after perestroika and the mass
dellusions that everythong would be just like Switzerland, as well as the
obvious geo-political changes - these are all factors which lead me to write
this book.
The basic question, which I have endeavoured to answer is this: What
did really happen at the end of the 1980's and why did the changes which
took place in Eastern Europe have global ramifications? Some of my
conclusions I date back to as early as 1982. In particular this is my view
of the relationship between communalisation (socialisation) and autonomy and
of the insubstantiality of statism at the end of the 20[th]
century. Other conclusions were formed in the late 1980's after
participating in a series of discussions at the congresses of the World
Federation for Future Studies which helped me to understand the situations
in other countries and to make comparisons with the situation in Eastern
Europe and other parts of the world. The third group of conclusions are
based on my own political experience as Deputy Prime Minister in the most
decisive period of reform processin Bulgaria and as a member of the
Bulgarian parliament from 1990-1994. My meetings with dozens of the world's
leading politicians during this period were of enormous influence in the
formation of the conclusions in this book. I cannot express adequate
gratitude to my colleagues from the World Organisation for Future Studies
and to my colleagues from the 21[st] Century Foundation in Sofia