ABSTRACT
Cornell political scientist Valerie Bunce, in her book Subversive Institutions: The Design and the Destruction of Socialism and the State, says the design of communist systems "functioned over time to divide and weaken the powerful, homogenize and strengthen the weak, and undercut economic performance". The countries of east central Europe received much more coverage during the period of their communist rule precisely because they were communist. They were on the front lines of the Cold War. Anytime they sneezed—as Hungary did in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Poland in 1956, 1970 and 1980-81—the Soviet Union was seen as possibly catching cold, which could always turn into pneumonia, and perhaps dying. European history courses in high school rarely include any material apart from the 19th-century great powers of Great Britain, France, Germany and Russia. Postcommunist Central and Eastern European broadcasting has varied enormously from country to country. But certain experiences are common.
