The Eclipse of Ideology Among the Communists who came to power in Eastern Europe after the war were men who had kept the Marxist-Leninist faith through the purges of the 30s, the Hitler-Stalin Pact and the deification of Stalin himself. Their belief in a total solution to the evils of the world enabled them to dismiss such events as necessities. Yet cracks in this philosophical monolith soon appeared, and with Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin the retreat from Ideological certainty became a stampede.
Under the impact of the explosions in Poland and Hungary in 1956, then of Czechoslovakia in 1968, the critics from within the party ranks came to perceive Communist ideology as irrelevant. In the third of four programmes,
Michael Charlton traces the story of the Intellectual defection from
Communism, the eclipse of ideology, with contributions from those In Eastern Europe who have been foremost In mounting the critique: Milovan DJilas
Leszek Kolakowski Eugcn Loebl and Edward Goldstueker
Producer DAVID MORTON