ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the concept of civil society in the transitions from Communist rule in two contexts, Poland and Hungary. The transition in Poland, representing the first of the series of struggles to dismantle a Soviet type regime, introduced a whole comprehensive strategy centering around the reconstruction of civil society. The category of civil society, central in the self-understanding of actors in the drama of the "end of communism", seems suddenly problematic after the events of 1989. In Poland a self-organizing society could rely on micro-structures, learning experiences as well as institutional models. It was the unique combination of these givens that distinguished Poland from all other contexts in the Soviet imperium. The program of the reconstruction of civil society through the vehicle of the one great movement within a framework of dualistic self-limitation had serious internal weaknesses. In the 1980s, the strategy of the reconstruction of civil society was imported or reinvented in other East European countries.
