This paper is my latest attempt in a series at comprehending the spirit of new capitalism in Eastern Europe. In contrast to a widespread view according to which this spirit is extremely weak, I will suggest that its real strength cannot be discovered if one a.) looks for it only in the delicate and airy forms of economic culture; b.) focuses exclusively on the anti-capitalist legacy of communist economic culture, ignoring its pro-capitalist heritage; c.) disregards a large-scale borrowing of economic cultures from the West during the past two decades.

First the thesis of ‘spiritless capitalism’ will be discussed. Then, I will introduce the concepts of ‘soft culture’ and ‘implicit spirituality’, as well as sketching up the road that led me to a research project on transnational cultural encounters in the economies of Eastern Europe. In the second half of the paper, one of the project's core empirical studies, which has been made in the heart of the ‘emerging markets’, banking, will be revisited to test the applicability of the notion of spiritual capital in secular societies of the region. In contrast to the assumption of a lack of capitalist spirit, one witnesses a veritable pro-capitalist cultural revolution unfolding in a major field of the post-communist economies, even if its results seem rather fragile for the time being.