Laurence McFalls

A spectre is haunting Europe, the spectre of Communism rising from
its ashes in the East. First in Lithuania, then in Poland and Hungary, and
now in eastern Germany, former Communist parties have recovered
with a vengeance, winning clear parliamentary majorities in the first
three countries and holding the balance of power in two of the new East
German Länder parliaments and returning with 30 seats as an even
larger gadfly to the Bundestag. The former Communists' resurgence
appears all the more threatening in that it is taking place not in the back-
waters of southeastern Europe but in the very countries that led the way
in tearing the Soviet empire asunder. After self-righteously rejoicing
over the final defeat of Communism, observers in the West are now
struggling to understand this resurrection of Marx's grandchildren,
though they can rest assured that the renamed Communists upon return
to government have pursued their predecessors' policies (albeit at a
slower pace) and thus perhaps confirmed that History has ended.

Since these former Communists, once back in power, have slowed but
not stopped the transition towards a market economy, the explanation
for their recent electoral successes may be relatively straightforward:
they are profiting from the nostalgia of ordinary citizens who have
borne the greatest costs of radical economic, social, and political change.
This explanation has found particular favor in Germany, where the
transformations in the eastern part of the country have been, by compar-
ison to the rest of the post-Soviet world, the most rapid and complete
and have supposedly divided the population into the "winners" and the
"losers" of unification. Thus, West German politicians and pundits have

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