ABSTRACT
East Central Europe and Democracy: neither term is self-explanatory. East Central Europe as a term of political geography refers to the four countries at the western periphery of the Soviet imperial system: Poland, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic (GDR), and Hungary. There are weighty reasons not to accept Milan Kundera's provocative division of Europe and the East, or even Perry Anderson's somewhat different and more traditional two-part categorization of Western and Eastern Europe. As a brilliant article by the Hungarian historian Jenö Szücs argues, Central Europe has represented at least since 1000 A.D. a third autonomous, if intermediate, lineage of historical development. 1 The expression Central Europe is needed to delimit that part of this area under Soviet occupation, excluding the western and southern portions which are part of Western Europe and Yugoslavia respectively. What is important here is that the political situation and perspectives of East or Sovietized Central Europe be treated as a unique cluster. 2
