VI. Post-totalitarian authoritarianisms: developments, characteristics and variants
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or transformation research, the question regarding the point in time at which institutionalised political systems emerge is of particular importance. If the transformation of Soviet socialism into something else can be structured in the phases of existential systemic crisis, political upheaval, and the actual reforms, the emergence of new political systems do not fall into the same phase in all countries. With the renunciation of totalitarian ideology, the already observable or in some countries even “exploding” pluralisation was stripped of its subversiveness. Thus, both totalitarianism and possible attempts to save it with the use of state violence were deprived of their legitimacy. This process contributed not least to the failure of the strangely indecisive coup that was carried out in the Soviet Union in August 1991. In a figurative sense, with the “writing off” of totalitarian ideology, “real reality” was finally politically accepted. Although it could be assumed that in the peripheral countries of the communist empire at the end of the 1980s, tinkering with the communist system would no longer automatically provoke military intervention by the Soviet Union, the communist rulers had a violence apparatus that was still operational. Due to this reason, it was advisable, especially in the geopolitically important states of the Eastern Bloc, to persuade them to voluntarily abandon ideology and thus seal the institutionalisation of the system. Even if the assertion is true that no post-communist democracy could be considered institutionalised before free and democratic elections are held, this does not mean, conversely, that it indicates the institutionalisation of democracy. The establishment of post-communist democracy or post-communist authoritarianism took more time in some countries and less time in others because the historical and systemic
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