Politics and Society in Postsocialism

Abstract

had to adapt to the new situation by redirecting their attention to the emergence of postsocialist societies. It seems that in many cases they have almost been too eager to take into account new research problems and to forget the old ones; many of the analy ses of the emerging postsocialist societies pay no attention to the "outdated" discussions of the developmental perspectives of so cialist societies. This amnesia suggests that both the analytical tools applied in analyses of socialist societies and the results of these analyses have no immediate relevance for understanding the emergence of the postsocialist societies. The social sciences that are studying the emerging postsocialist societies obviously face the same general problem as do the societies themselves they have to begin, in many respects, from scratch. This essay tries to question some aspects of the above-men tioned assumptions. It will try to show that the accumulated knowledge about socialist societies represents a stimulative start ing point for the analysis of the emergent postsocialist societies. This approach by no means implies that there exists a continuity between both types of society; my claim is that by focusing on the substratum on which the new societies grow, both continui ties and discontinuities can be highlighted. That is why, in the first part of the essay, some basic characteristics of socialist soci eties and the prevailing assumptions regarding their developmen 45