ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to challenge the assumption of a clear dividing line between a communist rule and its presumably democratic aftermath. It purposively inscribes the downfall of communism within a history of legal and state practises and ideological positions that cover a longer timeline than traditionally ascribed to the process. The chapter asserts that the signs of this fall, that is of an after communism, were already present in the slow but steady decline of the revolutionary thrust within state communism towards the routine of a bureaucratic machinery ritualistically linked to its initial ideological creeds. It starts with an attempt to grasp the legal and juris-prudential conundrum legated by what, rightly or wrongly, the authors continue to coin as the communist experience in Central and Eastern Europe. The chapter highlights the importance of linking the broader changes affecting not simply the communist state apparatuses and, as a matter of consequence, communist ideology as such.
