冷战后世界的梦想发生了什么？如今，动荡事件过去已一代人，我们原本应该生活在一个共识启蒙的时代——所有成熟国家都同意何为美好生活的原则。自由市场经济的胜利本不该导致一个毫不掩饰贪婪的总统上台，把美国政府变成个人牟利的机器。
What happened to the dream of a post-Cold War world? By now, a generation on from the tumultuous events, we were supposed to be living in an era of consensual enlightenment in which all mature nations agreed on the principles for a good life. The triumph of free market economics was not expected to install a shamelessly venal president who would turn the American government into a machine for personal profit.
几乎没有人预见到，全球意识形态对抗的结束不会带来理性与宽容的胜利，而是混乱与政治投机。我们为何未能察觉到，事后看来这或许本是可预见的？
No one (or scarcely anyone) foresaw that the end of the global ideological confrontation would bring, not a triumph of reason and tolerance, but chaos and political opportunism. How did we miss what, in retrospect, might have seemed predictable?
东欧极权共产主义的崩溃消除了一个直接的生死威胁。这是自由世界曾经沾沾自喜的好消息。（这一类别中剩余的力量——中国——在马克思看来根本就不是共产主义。）但共产主义本身——其思想及其策略——已经深深渗透进西方文化，以至于其可信度不可能一下子被根除，哪怕那些本应体现它的国家的崩溃再令人羞愧。
The collapse of totalitarian communism in Eastern Europe removed an immediate mortal threat. That was the good news on which the free world became recklessly intoxicated. (The remaining power in this category – China – is not communist in any sense that Marx would have recognised.) But communism itself – its ideas and its tactics – had permeated Western culture so indelibly that its credibility could not simply be eradicated at a stroke, however humiliating the downfall of the nations which were supposed to embody it.
这种剩余影响的一些并不令人意外：工会运动的激进派以及学术界的既得左翼，已经把他们的整个概念框架——甚至职业生涯——建立在马克思主义原则之上。一向如此主张的托洛茨基派完全可以争论（正如他们一直所做的那样）：苏联曾背叛了真正的信仰，它从未代表马克思主义的真正理想。于是这些坚定分子得以继续前行，几乎不承认他们所看到的只是一次不幸的局部挫折。
Some of this remaining influence was scarcely surprising: the militant wing of the trade union movement and the established academic Left had built their entire conceptual framework – not to mention their professional lives – around Marxist principles. It was easy enough to argue (as Trotskyists always had) that the Soviet Union had betrayed the true faith: that it had never represented the genuine ideals of Marxism. So the stalwarts could carry on, scarcely acknowledging what they saw as merely an unfortunate local setback.
这导致的后果是矛盾的。由于西方自由世界与东方共产主义暴政之间核战争的直接威胁显然已经消失，左翼激进主义不再被视为对生命的必然威胁，因此其参与者也不再被视为敌对杀人机器的有意识代理人。
The consequences of this were paradoxical. Because the immediate threat of nuclear war between the free world of the West and the communist tyrannies of the East had apparently disappeared, Left-wing activism was no longer seen as an inevitable threat to life and its practitioners, therefore, were not conscious agents of a murderous enemy.
西方残存的有组织共产主义如今可以被视为一种相当古雅、伤感的过去时代的遗迹，即使它偶尔在工业纠纷中制造麻烦。事实才刚刚开始变得清晰。颠覆本身并未消亡：它只是不再在一个可识别的外国势力的指挥下运作。它已经转变为一种支离破碎、缺乏纪律、零散且——虽然这可能是个奇怪的用词——业余化的模式，正因为缺乏全球领导力，这种模式反而更具不负责任。
What remained of organised communism in the West could now be seen as a rather quaint, sentimental relic of a bygone age even if it occasionally made a nuisance of itself in industrial disputes. The reality is only just becoming clear. Subversion itself is not dead at all: it just isn’t working under the direction of an identifiable foreign power. It has transmogrified into an incoherent, fragmented, undisciplined and – although this may seem an odd word to use – amateurish pattern which is all the more irresponsible for its lack of global leadership.
当世界强权的专制控制被移除时，颠覆活动变得更加不稳定、更缺乏原则，且更多地源于病态执着，而非苏联统治时期的鼎盛时代。图恩贝里一代青少年在气候抗议中随手泼漆、参加亲巴勒斯坦游行、加入法国学校骚乱之间切换自如的幼稚行为，早就该被克里姆林宫那些严肃人物 ruthlessly 制止——他们本希望所有人都能清晰地聚焦于用共产主义取代资本主义。
When the tyrannical control of a world power was removed, the business of subversion became more unstable, more unprincipled and more to do with pathological obsession than it ever had been in the glory days of Soviet rule. The adolescent antics of the Thunberg generation who move effortlessly between throwing paint in climate protests, to pro-Palestine marches, to joining French school riots, would have been shut down pretty ruthlessly by the serious guys in the Kremlin who wanted everybody to focus clearly on replacing capitalism with communism.
而现在，克里姆林宫想要的是恶魔般的模糊：以任何可能出现的机会主义形式，在西方制造尽可能多的不稳定、分歧和自我怀疑。这种目的几乎可以被新型颠覆形式无意中实现——前提是它们不至于如此透露出幼稚和不专业。
Now, what the Kremlin wants is diabolically amorphous: to create as much instability, discord and self-doubt in the West as possible in whatever opportunistic form happens to present itself. That end could be served, almost accidentally, by the new forms of subversion if they were not so transparently juvenile and unprofessional.
俄罗斯的破坏计划（如果可以称之为计划的话）并不是为了建立一种替代性的经济体系或不同的一套理想，而只是为了削弱一个竞争对手的霸权主义力量集团。方便的是，过去几十年里它实际上致力于用共产主义取代资本主义的时期，留下了一本关于破坏自由民主的技术百科全书。
The Russian programme (if it can be called that) of disruption is not designed to install an alternative economic system or a different set of ideals, but simply to handicap a competing hegemonistic power bloc. Conveniently, the decades in which it was actually dedicated to replacing capitalism with communism have left behind an encyclopaedia of techniques for undermining liberal democracy.
其中最有效的一种可能是渗透，如今这已成为英国政治生活中一个显著特征。随着大量极左成员进入科尔宾领导的工党，以及巴勒斯坦活动人士涌入绿党，托洛茨基主义学说的这一形式正公然展示其力量。但正是这种肆无忌惮——公开炫耀其无耻意图——才削弱了该项目。
Probably the most effective of these is infiltration which has now become such a notable feature of British political life. With the mass entryism of far-Left members into the Corbynite Labour party and the flood of Palestine activists into the Greens, this incarnation of the Trotskyist doctrine is brazenly demonstrating its power. But it is precisely that brazenness – the flaunting of its shameless intentions – which undermines the project.
上一代人的教训是：你不应透露你正积极意图改变你所渗透组织的性质——例如，从环境问题转向巴勒斯坦活动。在你刚好有足够人数登上你计划夺取的那辆车时，就公开展示你胜利的接管，这是愚蠢的。
Lesson from an earlier generation: you don’t reveal that you are actively intending to change the nature of the outfit you are infiltrating – from environmental concerns to Palestinian activism, for example. To make such an explicit exhibition of your triumphant take over at the moment when just enough of you have climbed aboard the vehicle you plan to seize is idiotic.
关键在于掩饰你的最终目标：以隐蔽而耐心的方式，用你自己的目标取代宿主机构的原始目标，希望在为时已晚之前没有人察觉。西方共产党人正是在苏联主人的严格监督下，这样成功地做了几十年。
The whole point is to disguise your ultimate objective: to replace insidiously and patiently the original goals of the host body with your own in the hope that nobody notices until it is too late. That was what Western communists, under the strict supervision of their masters in the Soviet Union, did so successfully for decades.
具有讽刺意味的是，共产主义极权主义的垮台似乎并未使“一位全能的、自我膨胀的统治者”这一理念失去信任。相当比例的美国选民（虽然比以前少了）仍似乎准备接受唐纳德·特朗普的总统职位，即使他公然违背这个国家所敬奉的根本宪法原则。
Ironically, the fall of communist totalitarianism does not seem to have discredited the idea of the all-powerful, self-aggrandising ruler. Quite a remarkable proportion of American voters (although fewer than before) still seem prepared to accept the presidency of Donald Trump even when he flouts the fundamental constitutional principles which the nation reveres.
这比表面上看起来更是一个复杂的政治难题，因为它出现在美国生活状况变得比以往更令人失望的时期——对大多数选民而言，这种失望的原因难以解释——而这种程度的失望甚至超过了苏联共产主义崩溃时人们所能想象的。对特朗普滥用职权之举的容忍，与我所说的“大幻灭”有着同样深的关联——即后冷战时期基于个人自由建立新世界秩序的梦想的破灭——正如与他可能声称所做的任何事情一样。
This is a more complicated political puzzle than it appears because it occurs at a time when the circumstances of life in the United States have become more disappointing – for reasons which most voters find inexplicable – than could have been imagined at the time when Soviet Communism collapsed. The tolerance of Trump’s extraordinary abuse of power has as much to do with what I would call the Great Disillusionment – the collapse of the post-Cold War dream of a new world order based on personal liberty – as on anything he may claim to have done.
与其在一个和平的新世界中蓬勃发展，西方却经历了一次精神崩溃。我要说清楚，我并不怀念冷战，也不怀念那场威胁要毁灭地球上生命的可怕意识形态斗争。令人警觉的是，其结束所留下的空虚。无论如何，政治必须恢复一种道德理想和承诺的感觉——这种感觉必须足够鼓舞人心，以至于能够超越那些真空中出现之人的腐败个人野心。
Instead of flourishing in a peaceful new world, the West had a nervous breakdown. I am not, to be clear, nostalgic for the Cold War or for the terrible ideological struggle that threatened to wipe out life on earth. What is alarming is the emptiness that its ending left behind. Somehow politics must restore a sense of moral ideals and commitments inspiring enough to transcend the corrupt personal ambitions of those who have stepped into the vacuum.