In 2004, the well-known Swiss social anthropologist Christian Giordano at a conference in Sofia stated that the post-socialist transition was over because it had never begun. In his paper he referred to the deep historical roots of dependencies and the economic marginalization of the eastern part of Europe by the core of capitalism in the West. In this long perspective the period of socialism was ephemeral, since it was self-evident that half of a millennium of peripheral status cannot be compensated by any form of economic strategy within a short period of time. How, then, can we talk about a quick spurt from socialist economy to capitalist systems that can be considered equivalent to the regions which invented the original? At its best, said Giordano, the capitalist systems of the East are phenomenological copies of the original. The term “transition,” therefore, means nothing other than a transformation from the periphery of the Soviet bloc to the periphery of European capitalism.

What is common between the two forms of hegemony “is the role of external power in setting and enforcing political agendas for the states of the region and thus in influencing domestic political outcomes.” The western democracies entered the politics of the region reluctantly and gradually formulated a list of conditions for its inclusion into its institutional framework: copying the West by economic liberalization, opening of the countries to foreign trade, privatization of state-owned assets and the marketization of prices.