Differing Aspects of Communism

Abstract

Even if the account of pre-communist differences between the East Central European (ECE) and Balkan states had been bigger than it really was, especially regarding the (in)experience with democracy (as will be shown in Section 3.1 of this chapter), the main characteristics of political and socio-economic developments of a half-century-long period of communist rule can in itself question the exclusivity of the importance of pre-communist history in tracing post-communist differences between these two groups of states. In this regard, particularly important is the same pattern of the violent imposition of communist party rule, its length and the thoroughness of its ideological and institutional re-building in all states from either of the two groups. Some two-thirds of the population who voted in the first post-communist elections in all of these states were born after 1940, that is during communist rule or just a few years before the communists took over. Not only could they not remember pre-communist times, but they had also gone through the full process of communist ideological and educational re-building, which was basically very similar (but not identical) in all Eastern European countries. These same and similar characteristics of communist development together with the earlier-mentioned narrowed economic development differences among individual Eastern European countries during communist rule (see Table 1.1. in Chapter 1) contributed to a further minimisation of the potential importance of pre-communist legacies for post-communist differences between the two groups of states¹ even where they were apparent, such as in the different levels of economic development, education, living standards or work, cultural and ethical skills (and memories of them — compare, e.g., Darden and Grzymała-Busse, 2006; Kitschelt et al. 1999 and Kitschelt, 2003 cited above).²