The revolutions ending Communist rule in 1989–1991 have presented special challenges to labor history. We have been witness to the largest social upheaval in the European world since the Russian Revolution. Yet society does not seem to have taken part in this revolution the way it did eighty years ago. Workers in particular seem bafflingly silent. Were not the workers terribly exploited by the Communist regimes? Were they not also capable of expressing determined opposition to the regime (most prominently in Poland, but elsewhere as well)? Yet workers have been relatively quiet across the region; though nearly every country has seen dramatic strikes, there is little evidence that another revolution is at hand. Political engagement, too, has faded faster than even the natural course of disillusionment might predict. Moreover, workers' activism has not followed expected lines: workers attacking student demonstrators in Romania, voting for a Perot-like enigma in a Polish presidential election, or for neo-fascists in Russia and elsewhere. Where are the politically conscious workers of the past? If we assume, as we should, that understanding labor must be a key to interpreting the post-Communist era, then we face some difficult questions.