The contemporary situation in the countries of Eastern Europe, with all their differences, is considered in terms of the economic, the political, and the ideological, the main features of which the author takes to be common to all these countries. McBride’s analysis of the economic appears to be the most convincing part of the book. Contemporary Eastern European countries, he argues, uncritically use capitalist society as a model or target for development without paying attention to the difficulties and mistakes of real capitalism. The past critique of bourgeois society is often simply dismissed as ideological and therefore utterly erroneous (72–73). Fascination with the “magic of the market” (126) often seems to deny the very possibility of its criticism. This implies an apology for the neoliberal version of capitalism, even in its extreme forms – justification for which is sought in simply pointing to the alleged ‘inefficiency’ of the previous economic and social order. An emphasis on the sheer efficiency of enterprises is too often taken as the main guiding slogan. Implementing a version of the capitalist, free market economy thus becomes a major concern to governments of countries in Eastern Europe. The morally and legally questionable (as well as hasty) privatization of enterprises that were formerly state or collectively run quite often leads to destabilization, a reduction in job security, the lowering of living standards, a disproportionate distribution of wealth, an increase in crime, the ubiquity of fraud (thus, many new bosses are in fact members of the old nomenklatura who managed to use their privileged position to cut a big chunk of formerly collective or state property, which is now private), and to further disappointment and the abandonment of the idea of the pursuit of the common good (32–33, 82, 95).

Politically and ideologically, this leads, according to McBride, to the notion of the inseparability of capitalism and freedom, capitalism and democracy, taken almost as a tautology (85): to say “democracy” or “freedom” is inevitably to imply “capitalism,” and vice versa. However, in Eastern European countries that had virtually no market infrastructure when rapid changes began to take place some fifteen years ago, the imposition of the unrestrained market economy quite often has ended if not in disaster, then at least in enormous difficulties concerning, first, the economy and, second, a deep collective identity crisis. Earlier cynicism about the viability of the Marxist-Leninist ideological norms is now supplanted by a new cynicism about the market, leading to utter disorientation and complete disillusionment concerning political, economic, and moral values. As McBride points out, the majority of Eastern Europeans consider the old regime oppressive and unjust, depriving people of economic and political opportunities and political freedom, although the new regimes are often perceived as being even worse, especially because of a decrease in the standard of living (91). Many Eastern Europeans feel the “financial dominance and cultural hegemony of the great transnational corporations and the Western economic and political entities in which they are based and with which they are aligned” (109), which is further perceived as an inescapable political, and especially economic, subordination and exclusion in the global context (92).

McBride’s analysis of the ideological, and to some extent the political consequences of the rapid changes in Eastern Europe, is not quite as persuasive (31ff.): at times the author briefly mentions the explananda without giving an elaborated diagnosis and without providing much of a detailed argument. Part of the problem is that establishing a coherent system of values that would encompass both the previously accepted profound passion for equality and just distribution in the Eastern European countries (a sort of implicit ‘socialist feeling,’ which was not entirely uprooted and existed not so much because of but rather despite the notorious and counterproductive official ideological propaganda) with a working market economy does not appear to be an easy task. In the sphere of the political, the notion of ‘civil society’ does not seem to be clearly defined and understood – or, rather, it is understood negatively in regards to the former excessively strong and all-pervasive state. Civl society is seen as that sphere which does not form part of the state and, as Habermas’s Zivilgesellschaft, is also taken to be separate from the economic realm (35–37, 97–98, 103). In many Eastern European countries, there is widespread perplexity about the contents and institutions of democracy, which initially was understood in negative terms – as the opposite to the oppressive totalitarian regime. However, when concretely implemented, confusion often arises about the concepts of civil society and liberal democracy, even where new democratic countries are led by intellectuals. Differences concerning the ongoing attempts to embody the ideas of civil society and democracy in various countries are not, however, sufficiently addressed in the book.

In the sphere of ideology, the author stresses the following main tendencies as characteristic of the state of affairs in post-Soviet Eastern Europe: a vivid interest in democracy, intense interpersonal relations, postmodernism, religious thought, and nationalism (39ff., 98). Resurgent interest in religion is partly explained by the religious roots of art; however, the connection between religion and contemporary political life in Eastern Europe and implications of such a connection are discussed very briefly and not in enough depth (41, 111–16). Nationalism, mainly in its Yugoslav variant, is not discussed at length either, being opposed to the all-pervasive “transnationalism” of global corporations and contemporary American nationalism (41–42, 106–11). The possibilities of understanding the rise of Eastern European nationalisms as a response to unsuccessful or only partly successful political and economic modernization, or as a response to the misconstrued notions of liberalism and democracy (which in some cases leads to associating these concepts with corruption among high officials), are left largely unexplored.

An interesting phenomenon in Eastern European countries is the important role intellectuals played in cultural life and political change (70). Even in the period from the sixties to the eighties, when intellectuals were often persecuted as liberals and dissidents (being potentially dangerous to the political system of the time), the status of the intellectual was still highly regarded. Nowadays, with the triumph of a new consumerism – or “new materialism,” as McBride puts it (125) – and the apology of rational egoism à la Chernyshevsky as a fundamental value that runs contrary to the former self-disinterested idealism, there is a tendency to downgrade the role of intellectuals: they are seen as having no worth in the race for the accumulation of wealth (129). At present Eastern European intellectuals are exerting less and less influence, and they are gradually getting ousted from the political sphere. This process is hardly reflected in the book, except for the discussion of “conversion” from the old “diamat” and “histomat” to the newly found and not yet clearly conceived idea of liberalism (47). But such a conversion does not seem to have really taken place: liberal intellectuals, as McBride himself notes, earlier expressed a great deal of skepticism about dogmatic Marxism-Leninism (20). One of the problems faced by Eastern European intellectuals is that although they were often very close to the Western (New) Left intellectuals in their views and fundamental values, they had to frame these values differently, due to a different historico-political situation. This sometimes led to a misunderstanding and misappropriation of basic concepts of contemporary liberalism. The need to rethink the possibility of a market-oriented socialism, still largely supported in Eastern Europe, requires the re-evaluation of the immediate political past – a task that presents a real challenge to Eastern European intellectuals. Unfortunately, McBride provides almost no references to contemporary debates among the Eastern European philosophers and political scientists involved in reconsidering recent changes (e.g., in Yu. Davydov, V. Havel, M. Mamardashvili, G. Markus, A. Michnik, and many others). The author only occasionally mentions some names (L. Kolakowski, M. Markovic, G. Petrovic) – even then, only as an illustration of his own position and in the context of his own discussion (17, 34, 57–58).

At times the argument of the narrative appears to be sketchy and journalistic rather than philosophical, more announcing and promising a theme than elaborating it at length. Some references seem to be provided by memory, which inevitably causes regrettable mistakes (thus, Stagira, the hometown of Aristotle, is placed on the Black Sea instead of the Aegean) (2). Perhaps the very genre and format of “reflections” presupposes not an extinguishable systematic analysis of possible reasons for the changes in question, but rather a number of glimpses that might give the reader an account of the events. Still, the book, written with sympathy for Eastern Europe and with knowledge of its affairs, avoids simplistic dichotomous divisions, raises important questions, and provides a number of insights, thereby inviting further discussion and investigation.