随着东欧的苏维埃阵营和苏联集团土崩瓦解，共产主义实际上已经奄奄一息了，而在它的核心选区 — — 那些共产党设法坚持下来的地方 — — 正在不断老化并失去了重整旗鼓的能力。
Discredited by the collapse of the USSR and the Soviet bloc in Eastern Europe, communism is effectively moribund, and its core constituencies – where communist parties manage to hang on – are aging and incapable of reproducing themselves.