Anxiety of Modern Man, Religion, and The Central European Experience [Volume: 7(1988), pp. 121-128]

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ZDENEK SUDA
in Central and Eastern Europe-would suggest that these ideologues admit
the believers may have good grounds for their position. Yet everything
else seems to denote that they fail to realize the actual root of their own
difficulties. The religion with which they have to wrestle is not just "a
survival of the pre-socialist past," least of all is it a "moribund" one; they
themselves have in a large measure contributed to its regeneration. That
is why the ideologists of "real socialism" cannot understand, either, the
various spontaneous or underground movements of the young, which often
look like eccentric fads, but in reality are substitutes for churches, philosophical schools or other sets of answers to the metaphysical questions
about the meaning of human existence in the modern world. Their inability
to comprehend this connection can be traced back to an earlier, fundamental
failure of the communist movement which they may have already forgotten,
but which they much more likely have never acknowledged: the communist
experiment, pursued in Central Europe for four decades, failed not only
in the areas of economy and social organization but also in the realm of
ideas and values. "Real socialism," far from being a solution to the plight
of the modern man, is a part of this very problem.