DECOMMUNIZE

transitive verb (Politics) To remove the communist basis from (a country, its institutions or economy), especially in Eastern Europe; loosely, to democratize. Also as a noun decommunization, the process of dismantling communism; adjective decommunized. Etymology: Formed by adding the prefix de- (in its commonest sense of removal or reversal) and the verbal suffix -ize to the root commun-. History and Usage: The word has been in use since the early eighties, when the first signs emerged of a willingness in communist countries to allow a small amount of private enterprise in some areas of their economies. Its use became more frequent in the late eighties--first in relation to Poland and Hungary and later to all former Warsaw Pact countries, as the whole edifice of Marxism in Eastern Europe began to be replaced by varying degrees of democracy and capitalism. The verb is sometimes used intransitively, in the sense 'to become decommunized'. The noun decommunization covers all the processes, both economic and political, which contribute to the dismantling of communism, whereas democratization and its Russian equivalent demokratizatsiya really refer only to the political process. Debrezhnevization was used for a short time to describe the personal discrediting of Leonid Brezhnev and his style of government, a process which took place during the mid eighties, shortly after Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union. The momentum of decommunization is likely to carry most of the successor states of the Soviet Union quite far to the right. The Times 24 Feb. 1990, p. 10 'We cannot decommunize a whole society overnight,' says Friedrich Magirius, superintendent of Leipzig's Protestant churches, who notes that East Germany was 'a typical dictatorship'. Time 9 July 1990, p. 75