Correspondence From Bucharest – Intellectuals as Political Actors in Eastern Europe: The Romanian Case
Correspondence From Bucharest – Intellectuals as Political Actors in Eastern Europe: The Romanian Case

Summary/Abstract: In both the civic movements before 1989 and during the revolutions, the East European intellectuals seemed to have found their place and the proper audience for their performance; after the extraordinary enthusiasm of 1989, European intellectuals and dissidents were promoted by the Paris and New York intellectual establishments and, to quote Vladimir Tismaneanu, "glorified as the apostles of a new revolutionary dawn." In the last two years, a serious disenchantment with them apparently has occurred. For most Western observers, these intellectuals seem to have lost the battle to become the ruling class of their postcommunist societies and to have wasted the best chance of the postwar European intelligentsia to inaugurate a stable rule by philosopher kings. [...]

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