Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "1989 Devrimleri" in Turkish language version.
Within the communist world, certain strata of population were particularly sensitive to Western influences. Late communism produced sizable, specific middle classes of relatively well-educated professionals, technicians and even highly skilled blue-collar workers. [...] These classes had no attachment whatsoever to Marxist-Leninist ideology, while they became attracted to the Western way of life. Many members of the ruling 'nomenklatura' shared the same sentiments, as Western consumerism and individualism seemed more attractive to them than communist collective Puritanism. There were two very important consequences of this, one economic, and the second political. The economic one was the attractiveness of consumerism [...]. The political consequence was the pressure to increase the margins of political freedom and public space.
For East Europeans, the promise of mass consumption was preferable to the nightmare of solidarity even if it meant also the dominance of money and the private control of wealth. In reality, the fall of communism had more to do with the appeals of capitalist consumerism than political democracy.
