‘The womb from which the vile beast emerged is still fertile … (B. Brecht).' In March 1988, the German cartoonist, Horst Haitzinger, illustrates the threat posed by neo-Stalinists to the policy pursued by Mikhail Gorbachev, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, for the introduction of a programme of political and economic reform — the basis of perestroika — in the Soviet Union.