ABSTRACT
“Eastern Europe” is primarily a political concept rather than a geographical one; it is understood to mean the socialist regimes of Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia. The political regimes of the East European countries have certain common denominators. On the face of it the East European political system displays the usual political processes that exist in every democratic regime. The absolutely fundamental characteristic of the East European political system is the unlimited and uncontrolled—in a word, total—rule of the communist party. Communist claims of legitimacy are based on un-democratic, unorthodox, and often travestied practices and processes. The supreme party organs or a selected group of party leaders decide matters of succession and replacement and seldom if ever disclose the reasons behind their moves. The truth--the only and indisputable one--is a matter of party pronouncement through the usual mass media channels, which are controlled by the party organs.
