ABSTRACT
"Real socialism" in Eastern Europe was as unreal as the "real democracies" and "real market economies" of the near future. The East Europeans lived according to their own dynamics, and their perception was less ideological than pragmatic. On the constitutional level and on the level of public political discourse, Eastern Europe has been successfully Europeanized. In Eastern Europe, however, people are conditioned to tune their public behavior to the party line as disseminated via the media. Eastern Europe has just emerged from an era where it was subjected to a uniform political and economic blueprint. The danger of war apart, the true reform issue is the elimination of the lasting legacy of socialism, namely the giant state industries and agricultural production units. Soviet security interests, couched in the language of socialism, had prevented any reform that jeopardized party control. The Russian steamroller has left Eastern Europe in shambles.
