The End of an Ideology? Not Quite

In its program today recalling the end of the Soviet Union, SRI's "The World" exhibited the premature capitalist
triumphalso typical of treatments of
this topic. I responded thus:

"It's perfectly absurd to call this "the end of an ideology." Parties that call themselves communist still have millions of members worldwide, counting only those that don't hold state power. To describe the breakup of the Soviet Union as the end of communism makes as much sense as calling the breakup of the Napoleonic Empire the end of republicanism."