Unable or unwilling to shift ground to the center as so many European Communists leaders have done, Mr. Zyuganov and his colleagues seem locked in a time warp.

And in the end, what seems most remarkable is how brittle the East European Communists have proved to be once stripped of Moscow's muscle.

Your report of heated intraparty debates about ideological fundamentals is borne out by private tales by Western European Communists about agonizing intraparty discussions.

But traditionally, Eastern European Communists have been suspicious of rock, seeing it as an example of commercialized Western decadence.

See: Paolo Spriano, Stalin and the European Communists.

Both American and European Communists considered Darkness at Noon to be anti-Stalinist and anti-USSR.

European Communists cultivate the comforting long view, the ability to see the bewildering twists and turns of history not as capricious riddles but as elements of a larger and ultimately benevolent design.

Western European Communists like Georges Marchais, the French party chief, don't want too much glasnost shining on their tightly run bureaucracies.

One of the proudest legacies of the European Communists is the justified conviction that they played a vital role in accelerating the decolonization of Africa and Asia.

Practice has also shown the irrepressible vitality of capitalism and its inherent cruelty; the forces that European Communists are fighting are thus very powerful ones.