ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that 'democratization' which is a misleading label for what is happening in postcommunism. It also argues that fundamental to all these aspects of the transition are questions of context and especially culture: the meanings and expectations that people bring to the institutional changes. The gap between the culture and the institutional changes has set the scene for the major challenge of postcommunism: the so-called consolidation of democracy. It is where the majority of the population believes in the appropriateness of democratic resolutions of conflicts, and in their own political efficacy. The chapter identifies some of the major issues in the transition from communism, and supply a civil society 'perspective'. After all, this is perhaps the major economic, social and political transformation now underway in our world. Nationalism is used by Russian politicians to help supply an answer to the quest for social order which characterizes postcommunism in general.
