Introduction

It is a truism to say that the present and its continuation into the future are determined by the past. Post-communist societies, however, have multiple pasts. We may think of, at least, three different pasts exercising their causal influence on the present: the communist period, the more remote pre-communist period, and the very immediate period of extrication from the communist regimes. The critical question then becomes how and to what extent these three pasts have shaped the national transformation paths.

The most popular argument in “transitology” is certainly the one which points at the negative impact of 40 years of communism on mentalities and political culture. People in Eastern Europe, it is argued, have become used to patronage and protection under the old regime; they deeply distrust legal procedures and political elites; they tend to be skeptical of anything new and, thus, resist changes. The egalitarian ideologies of Marxism, sometimes bordering on a culture of envy, are supposed to be an obstacle to economic reforms that will inevitably make some groups better off than others. It is assumed that those attitudes and patterns of behavior will continue at least during the early transition and constrain the speed and direction of reform. Likewise, the economic legacies of communism are supposed to impede current reform efforts. Post-communist societies inherited, among other things, an outdated capital stock, distorted sectoral structures, oversized firms, arbitrarily allocated credits, a substantial monetary overhang, and a huge foreign debt from the past regime.