Introduction

The collapse of communism is most usually symbolically equated with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 (about twenty years ago), although in some countries it is reckoned a bit later. But the term “post-communist Europe” is not an adequate one for variety of reasons. Two of these reasons are worth mentioning in connection with the content of this chapter. First, the term simply acknowledges that some countries have a communist past, but does not say anything about the main features their new social orders have developed during years of post-communist transformation. Second, there are numerous post-communist countries, countries which range from the center of the continent through the southeast to Eastern Europe, or from the Czech Republic and Slovenia through Macedonia and Albania to Ukraine and Moldova. These are countries with different histories, social and cultural specificities and social development possibilities with, in a word, profound social differences despite 45 (or, in the case of the majority of ex-Soviet Union states, 70) years of common past. Therefore, the term “post-communist Europe” used in this chapter is simply a technical one. In addition, the chapter covers only part of post-communist Europe: countries that joined the European Union in 2004 (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia) or in 2007 (Bulgaria and Romania) and one country which is set to become the twenty eight member state of the European Union in July 2013 (Croatia).