In the doctrine of Marx and Engels, the proletariat appears endowed with all the qualities associated with Divinity in the prototypic Book (the Old Testament): omniscience, omnipotence, and right almost all the time. There is a self-creative moment in the historic process they described, resulting from political activism and commitment to change in the world. No one should lightly discard the Utopian core or the ideal embodied in the doctrine. After all, nobody could argue against a world of freedom where each person participates with the best one has to offer, and is rewarded with everything one needs. Free education, free medical care, access to art and liberty in a context of limitless unfolding of talent and harmony with nature, of shared wealth and emancipation from all prejudices-all this is paradise on Earth (minus religion).
It should be pointed out that, within the system, the entire practical human experience related to literacy-and the accomplishments listed above are literacy- based-was subsidized. In no other part of the world, and under no other regime, were so many people subjected to literacy. That the system failed should not lead anyone to ignore some of the achievements of the people regimented under a flag they did not care for: fascinating art, interesting poetry and music, the massive collection and preservation of folklore, spectacular mathematics, physics, and chemistry arose from beneath terror and censorship. To survive as an artist, writer, or scientist meant to force creativity where almost no room for it was left. Under no other regime on Earth did people read so much, listen to music more intensely, visit museums with more passion, and care for each other as family, friends, or as human beings, episodes of brutality notwithstanding. It is too simplistic to accept the line that people read more in East Europe and the Soviet Union because they had nothing else to do. The pragmatic framework was set up under the assumption of permanence, stability, centrality, and universality founded on literacy.
It goes without saying that the misuse of language (in political discourse and in social life) played its role in the quasi-unanimous silent rejection of the system, even more in silent, cowardly complicity with it. When the literate machine of spying on the individual fell apart, people saw themselves in the merciless mirror of opportunistic self- betrayal. The records will stand as a testimony that writing does not lead only to Solzhenitsyn's novels, Yevtushenko's poetry, Shoshtakovich's music, and the romantic Samizdat, but also to putrid words about others, kin included. The opaqueness of literacy partially explains why this is possible. Something other than the opaqueness granted by literacy (i.e., complicity established in society) explains how it became a necessary aspect of that society. Germans were not better, exceptions granted, than their fascist leaders; the peoples in the Soviet block were not better, exceptions granted again, than the leaders they accepted for such a long time.
But what went relatively unnoticed by experts in East European and Soviet studies, as well as by governments fighting the Cold War, is the dynamics of change. The system was economically broke, but still militarily viable (though overrated) and over-engaged in security activities-tight control of the population, economic and political espionage, active attempts to export its ideology. The structure within which people were to realize their potential-one of the ideals of communism-had few incentives. But all this, despite the impact of the yet unfinished revolution, is only the tip of the iceberg, the visible side when one looks from the riverbank of the free world where incentives lead to self-sufficiency and complacency. The major aspect is that the dynamics of the system was severely affected by artificially maintaining a pragmatic framework and a system of values not suited to change. This applies especially to the major shift-from the industrial model to post-industrial society, to a context of practical experiences of human self-constitution freed from the restrictions carried over from the politics of mind and body control-experienced by the rest of the western world.
Levels of expectation beyond the satisfaction of immediate needs (food, clothing, shelter), and of literacy-associated expectations (education, access to art and literature, travel), could not be satisfied unless and until levels of efficiency impossible to reach in the pragmatic context of industrial societies were made possible by a new pragmatics. Despite the fact that more writers, more publishing houses, more libraries, as well as more artists, theaters, opera houses, symphonic orchestras, research institutes, and more museums than in the rest of the world were politically and economically supported in the Eastern Block (almost to the extent that the secret police was), activities related to literacy had only a short-term impact on the individuals subjected to or taking advantage of them. This was proven dramatically by the proliferation of commercially motivated newspapers and publications (pornography among them) following the breakdown of the power structure in various countries of the Block, and followed by an even faster focus on entertainment television and obsession with consumption.
The main events leading to the breakdown-each country had its own drama, once the major puppeteer was caught off-guard by events in the Soviet Union-took place with the nation staring at the TV screens, seduced by the dynamics of the live transmission for which literacy and prior literate use of the medium were never well equipped. The live drama of the hunt for Ceausescu in Romania, the climax of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the events in Prague, Sofia, and Tirana continued the spirit of the Polish tele-drama in the shipyards. It then took another turn, during the attempted coup in the Soviet Union, practically denying the literate media any role but that of late chroniclers. The initial lessons in democracy took place via videotape. Various networks, from WTN (World-Wide Television News) to CNN, but primarily the backward technology of the fax machine, which absorbed essential literacy into a focused distribution of individual messages, provided the rest. As primitive as digital networks were, and still are in that part of the world, they played an important role. Not political manifestos or sophisticated ideological documents were disseminated, but images, diagrams, and live sequences. In the meanwhile, entertainment took over almost all available bandwidth. What the rest of the world consumed in the last fifteen years (along with fashion, fast food chains, soft drinks, and consumer electronics) penetrated the lives of those whose revolt took place under the banner of the right to consume. Here, as in the rest of the world, the spiritual and the political split for good. The spiritual gets alimony; the political becomes the executor of the trust.
What failed the system was the lack of understanding of all the factors leading to new productive experiences: the framework for optimal interaction of people, circumstances of progressive mediation and further specialized human self-constitution, a practical context of networking and coordination based on individual freedom and constraints assumed by individuals as they define their expectations. Parallel to the literate structure of a politics that failed is the experience of churches in the Soviet Block. In a show of defiance towards the political dictatorship, people attended church, itself a mainstay of literate praxis (independent of the book or books they adopt for their basic program). Once religion was able to assert its literate characteristics through the imposition of constraints-so like those of the political system just overthrown- churches began to experience the low attendance that the rest of the world is already familiar with.
No matter how much more quickly events take place in our age, it is probably still too early to understand all the implications of the major political event represented by the fall of the Soviet empire. For instance, in a context of global economy, how can one correctly evaluate the emergence of new national states and forceful national movements when the post-national state and the trans-national world are already a reality? The question is political in nature. Its focus is on identity. Identity reflects all the relations through which people constituted themselves as part of a larger entity-tribe, city, region, nation-defined by biological and cultural characteristics, shared values, religion, a sense of common space and time, and a sense of future.
A world of worlds
"We have made Italy, now we have to make Italians," declared Massimo d'Azeglio during the first meeting of the Italian Parliament. A little over 100 years old, the nation-state was the most tangible product of the political practical experience in the pragmatic context whose underlying structure is so well reflected in literacy. Together with the nation-state, the modern notion of nationality was defined and became a major force of political life. As part of the political consciousness in the age of industrial production, national consciousness played a very precise role, ultimately expressed in all forms of nationalism. It unified all those whose similarities in biological characteristics, language, lore, and practical experiences were constituted in a framework of shared resources and political goals. Germany came into existence through a unifying language (Hoch Deutsch) and was consolidated through its literacy. Italy went through a similar process. In other instances, nations were born as a result of voluntary political acts: the United States, the nations declared independent after the fall of the Soviet Union, Croatia, Macedonia, some of the Arab countries, and a number of African nation-states, once colonial powers could no longer afford to resist the force of change. As with everything pertaining to politics, national politics entails expectations corresponding to past phases (the basic passions that once made up tribal solidarity), to instances of human interaction well overhauled by the new realities of the integrated world.