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Capitalism and socialism, opposed to each other in the Cold War, began to gradually exchange their features: in the West, capitalism started incorporating socialist institutions of welfare state, and the soft version of socialism became an ideology of intellectuals. At the same time, in the East, socialism could not resist consumer culture, while intellectuals had switched to either conservative or purely liberal positions, both being sharply critical of the left. This game of two mirrors gradually became obvious and produced a large-scale neoliberal anti-socialist wave that started in the United States and then splashed over the Iron Curtain. It crushed everything behind that curtain, making it possible to build, to the applause of the intelligentsia, new cartoonish capitalism on the remains of the socialist scaffolding.