ABSTRACT
Since the collapse of the Iron Curtain, the debate on post-socialisms has been shaped by two distinct features: a strong Europe-/Soviet-centred view, and a fuzziness about the meaning of ‘socialism’ per se. Fundamentally in the shadow of the Iron Curtain, simplistic propaganda of ‘East’ versus ‘West’ and communism versus democracy, has shaped the view of, and response to, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and thus the historic epicentre of the ‘communist East’. The Cold War propaganda and the subsequent euphoria about the demise of the communist regimes meant that ‘western’ values, societal arrangements and state structures were deemed the ‘natural’ choice for the disintegrating CEE states and the Soviet Union. This has directly contributed to the third main characteristic of post-‘socialist’ transition, that of defining ‘transition’ as a universal, essentially uniform, process, that requires equally uniform and prescriptive policy responses. The issue of policy and value transfer has thus been a key concern in the process of ‘transition’ from socialism to post-socialism (however defined). But the realities of these changes have been much more diverse and unpredictable than had been suggested, and expected, in public discourse at the time; this includes geographical variations across the spatial scales national to local. It also includes the realisation that there is more to ‘socialism’ and ‘post-socialism’ than the European version, which dominated by far the debate and thus appeared as the embodiment of post-socialist developments per se.
