Next year marks the 20^th anniversary of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. I'd wager that there are few British 18-year-olds around now who have any idea what communism, in either theory or practice, actually meant for millions of people. If they're from state schools, they'll certainly know about the Nazi Holocaust and something too about the slave trade from their history teachers. If they weren't paying attention, then by osmosis alone some impressions of these events would have entered their subconscious via television and the cinema. Popular culture - Hollywood, the BBC - has, on the whole, been good at keeping them alive.