By Mike Haynes, Reproduced from Socialist Review
What happened to the illusions that free market capitalism would bring democracy, social justice and equality to the societies of Eastern Europe? Mike Haynes reports
British tourists are commonplace in the former Soviet bloc today. Cheap flights take you to Prague or Budapest. You can spend a weekend in the Baltic states or even make it to Moscow and St Petersburg. The beer is cheap. For stag nights and last minute flings the prostitutes are numerous and cheap. It is easy to combine a visit to some of the finest sights with some of the worst. And many do. Out of sight, out of mind.
In Western Europe migrants from these countries are common. We meet them every day working in bars and hotels, on the farms and in the factories. Supermarkets in
Britain have special sections for Polish food. In the poorer parts of the cities small shops specialise in Eastern European foods for those far from home.
In the richest areas of Western cities, “their” elites rub shoulders with “our” elites, competing to buy the best housing. And if the Eastern European rich are rather poorer this year and the migrants fewer, the closeness of the links that exist would still have been hard to imagine in 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell.
Today the former Soviet bloc is a mass of contradictions and how we cut through them is a matter of controversy. This question remains urgent, not because of the past but the present. Today many of these countries, which were supposed to be marching towards the future, have been hit hard by the global crisis. Instead of emerging market economies some cynics have coined the term submerging economies for them.
The old Soviet bloc was made up of the countries of Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria and the USSR. Today East Germany is no more, the USSR is split into the 15 successor states and the Czech and Slovak republics have divorced. Further south the former Yugoslavia has fragmented and Albania remains barely known. Together roughly 400 million people live in these states.

The Council of Canadians, one of Canada’s largest public advocacy organizations, with members and chapters across the country, views positively the Olympic goal of friendly international competition between athletes who excel in their respective sports. We understand and appreciate the pleasure and enjoyment so many around the world share in the spectacle and achievements of the Olympic Games.
In 2005, the British publisher Jonathan Cape launched Jung Chang and Jon Halliday’s Mao: The Unknown Story, to great fanfare. The book pictures Mao as a liar, ignoramus, fool, philistine, vandal, lecher, glutton, hedonist, drug-peddler, ghoul, bully, thug, coward, posturer, manipulator, psychopath, sadist, torturer, despot, megalomaniac and the greatest mass murderer of the twentieth century – in short, a monster, equal to or worse than Hitler and Stalin. He cared nothing about the fate of the Chinese people and his fellow human beings, or even his close friends and relatives. He was driven by bloodlust and the craving for power and sex. He ruled by terror, led by native cunning, and defeated Chiang Kai-shek by leaning towards Stalin and treacherously insinuating moles and sleepers into the Guomindang.
Mae Tso tells how the young Navajo women, with their babies, were constantly on the run from the Calvary in the 1860s, hiding in the caves and rocks of Black Mesa. Then captured and forced on the Longest Walk, they were driven at gunpoint across the swift Rio Grande. Babies and elderly were swept away. Eventually after the harsh imprisonment at Fort Sumner, N.M., Navajos returned to their homeland.





Generally, each sun dance has a sponsor, usually the main dancer, who bears the expenses of the ceremony. The event ordinarily involves about a week or more of activity consisting of an early private period, during which preparations are made and instruction and prayer take place, followed by the public phase of dancing. Construction of the sun dance lodge is accompanied by complex rituals in which a special tree is cut for use as a center pole, with the dance enclosure erected around it. The entrance faces east, and in some tribes sunrise ceremonies mark each days dawn during the dance. Inside, an altar is constructed, usually featuring a decorated buffalo skull. Dancers fast and abstain from drinking during the three or four days of dancing. While special songs are chanted by drummers near the lodge entrance, each participant moves rhythmically back and forth from the periphery of the lodge to the center pole. Dancers continuously blow on eagle- bone whistles, fixing their eyes on the crotch in the center pole that is typically known as the Thunderbird’s Nest or eagles nest. Periods of rest alternate with intervals of dancing. At the end of the sun dance, purification rites are held and the participants may drink water and break their fast. The lodge is then abandoned, its components remaining briefly as a reminder of the ceremony before returning to the elements.
Several Mapuche communities have begun to reclaim traditional lands in Araucania, central Chile.

