What is postcommunism?

Political science literature is abundant in the liberal-progressive interpretation of postcommunist transition. The focus of this approach is more concerned with the newly evolved constitutional order and political systems than with political culture. This article makes an attempt, not independently of Karl Mannheim’s ideas of politics, at a conservative interpretation of postcommunism claiming that postcommunism belongs to the story rather than to the history of communism. Special emphasis is laid upon the interplay of founding a democracy as a regime and the political culture that is meant to support democratisation. A number of authors like Bruce Parrott, Larry Diamond, Francis Fukuyama, and Samuel Huntington are quoted to give a skeptical view of the postcommunist transition.