This paper discusses the author's fieldwork experiences in the 1980s and subsequently in the 1990s after the collapse of state socialism. The analysis compares young workers of Csepel, an industrial district of Budapest, to Hungarians of Transylvanian Romania. In seeking to understand the changes that have been taking place in these communities and their implications for anthropologists, the author explains why the self-reflective analyses of previous fieldwork achieved within state socialist societies are now lacking and often showed scholarly bias. As ideologically unattractive as this statement may appear, it has to be acknowledged. And moreover, since post-communist social forces bring in different types of power relations, a new departure for studying East and Central Europe is here advocated.