It was a temptation that proved to be remarkably resilient.Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the once fellow-travelingEuropean left had no choice but to admit that the god to which it hadlong rendered faithful service had been an illusion, and incurablydysfunctional to boot. Yet that grudging concession, as Revel observed,did little to chasten the former groupies of totalitar ianism. On thecontrary, it served as a springboard for a fresh assault onliberal-democratic principles.
The tipping point, in Revel's view, was the publication in 1997 of"The Black Book of Communism," an 800-page compendium of the serialbarbarities of communist regimes from China and Ethiopia to Russia andCambodia.