When it snowed in Moscow, overcoats would come out in Karachi. No longer.
There used to be a time when the village Bulhereji near Mohenjodaro in Pakistan's Sindh province used to be known as Little Moscow, so strong was the communist influence there. Today, Bulhereji shows hardly a trace of the once-active Left movement.
The waning of communist fervour is the same all over Pakistan. Former members of the Communist Party of Pakistan (CPP) are now a divided lot. Some have surrendered to other political ideologies, some have taken solace in Islam, while there are also those who desperately bank on the comeback of communism. Some praise Mikhail Gorbachev, others curse him; many have nothing to do with their past and a few proudly clutch on to it.
The collapse of the Soviet Union may have shattered the belief of many in communism, but not so for the few who maintain that it was not communism that fell but a "handful of corrupt communist leaders". This never-say-die group is no longer active in politics, but that does not prevent it from celebrating even a small communist victory in any part of the world, and being crestfallen when reverses take place. It rejoiced when the communists returned and replaced Lech Walesa in Poland, came to power in Nepal, and maintained their hold in India's West Bengal. On the other hand, there was deep shock when the Taliban hung the communist leader Najibullah (who, incidentally, was the brother-in-law of a former Peshawar communist).