It Is What Makes The Reform Process

But How Can You Speed Up The Transformation Of Society In A Country As Large As Russia? Those Sounding The Moral Outcry Are The Ones Who Are Trying To Dictate Their Standards From The Outside. Of Course, That Isn't The Right Way To Go Either. One Cannot Impose Democracy From The Other Side Of National Borders, Which Is Something We Ourselves Experienced During The Communist Era. The West's Policies Toward Eastern Europe, The Helsinki Process - None Of That Really Helped Us.

I Was 25 Years Old And Pursuing My Doctorate In Economics When I Was Allowed To Spend Six Months Of Postgraduate Studies In Naples, Italy. I Read The Western Economic Textbooks And Also The More General Work Of People Like Hayek. By The Time I Returned To Czechoslovakia, I Had An Understanding Of The Principles Of The Market. In 1968, I Was Glad At The Political Liberalism Of The Dubcek Prague Spring, But I Was Very Critical Of The Third Way They Pursued In Economics.

And Finally, There Is Another Danger: The Emergence Of Nonideological But Very Aggressive 'isms,' Which Are Really Quite New. Let Me At Least Name Them: We All Care About Human Rights, But I Am Afraid Of 'human Rightism.' We All Want To Have A Healthy Environment, But I See The Danger In Environmentalism. To Put It Politically Correctly, I Admire The Second Gender, But I Fear Feminism. We All Are Enriched By Other Cultures, But Not By Multiculturalism. I Am Aware Of The Importance Of Voluntary Associations, But I Fear Ngoism.

As Someone Who Lived Under Communism For Most Of My Life I Feel Obliged To Say That The Biggest Threat To Freedom, Democracy, The Market Economy And Prosperity At The Beginning Of The 21st Century Is Not Communism Or Its Various Softer Variants. Communism Was Replaced By The Threat Of Ambitious Environmentalism.

People Like Me Who Were Engaging In Brinkmanship With The Party Economic Bosses And The Open Dissidents Who Were Being Arrested Were Pursuing A Common Goal In Different Ways.