By now it is obvious that even though the blueprint of classical state socialism aimed for uniformity across countries and within societies, a variety of national hybrids actually developed in the state-socialist world. The most casual observers intuit, for instance, that Romania was not Poland, and specialists are keenly aware of the myriad ways in which the developmental paths of Czechoslovakia and Hungary diverged from one another, or from those of the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, and the German Democratic Republic. Some have also explored the similarities and differences amongst the Chinese, Hungarian, and Yugoslav “reform” variants, while a smaller group has focused on the East Asian or Latin American experiences with the state-socialist blueprint.

Even analysts sensitive to such differences, however, have generally grouped Hungary and Poland together as very similar pre-1989 “reformers.” This categorization, to be sure, makes a certain amount of sense. After all, Hungary, Poland, and Yugoslavia appeared avant garde beside the Soviet Union and other more “conservative” countries. (Outside the region, only China could be considered a serious economic reformer.) But closer inspection of the prolonged internal transformations of Hungary and Poland suggests that in many ways it is precisely these two countries that represented opposing variants of state socialism. One came to resemble a laboratory for controlled economic experimentation, the other held out the ironic image of a workers' state buffeted by overt labor-state conflict.