hi Doris -
when i was writing/asking
>"what new meanings emerged from the Bolshevik revolution? or the
>ultimately
>failed resistance in Hungary? Romania? China? the crueler truth is that
>these
>actions, while collective, seem to fall short of producing any change."
i was thinking of a more immediate outcome, a change in the material
conditions of the
participants, something that signaled an influence. it was certainly
short-sighted of me.
>
>So you don't think that, for example, the "failed resistance in Hungary,"
>or
>Czechoslovakia, in the late 1950s and 1960s have anything to do with the
>downfall of communism and the re-unification of East and West Europe?
really? no, i don't. i think Hungary is still full of secret police who
steal people from their homes
and "make" them disappear, i think freedom of speech and the press are a
continued struggle in Eastern Europe. i think political freedoms are
constrained by the greater breadth and depth of bureaucratic corruptions
that have dominated the East & West (and North and South for that matter)
for much longer than
any specific regime. the faces and names change, but the structures remain
the same.
i am not sure i've "seen" the downfall of communism. and
given the violence and hatred that dominates each country's ethnic
composition,
the continued racist hatred of refugees,
i wonder what re-unification is aside from a currency.
so, i don't see the Europe you see, and i don't think any of the uprisings
and civil wars have
actually produced a change in the quality of life for most people who live
there (and WOW what a generalization! ouch!)
diane
**********************************************************************
:point where everything listens.
and i slow down, learning how to
enter - implicate and unspoken (still) heart-of-the-world.
(Daphne Marlatt, "Coming to you")
***********************************************************************
diane celia hodges
university of british columbia, centre for the study of curriculum and
instruction
==================== ==================== =======================
university of colorado, denver, school of education
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