Democracy to Come: The Ideology of Reform and Transition in Central Eastern Europe

After WWII, countries of Central Eastern Europe (CEE) experienced numerous changes of their political regimes. The ideologies of these political regimes, aiming the modernization of the societies in the region, were eager to integrate the idea of democracy in its own way. In my paper, I discuss the ideological and semantic changes of the concept of democracy in the era of state socialism and the transition to constitutional liberalism. I analyze the changes of the concept of democracy in its semantic relation to the key concepts of the post-war politics, as socialism, dictatorship of the proletariat, reform, dissidence, liberalization, constitutionalism, capitalism, and liberalism. These features still dominate the idea of democracy in the region, eclipsing the meaning of participation in political decision-making.