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    This is the fourth issue of SOCIAL RESEARCH devoted to Central and East Europe.  The first one appeared in 1988 when the communist regimes were still in power.  The second appeared in the beginning of 1990 on the heels of the stunning collapse of those regimes, while the third appeared at the close of 1991 at a time when the difficulties and pains of transition were becoming increasingly clear, and the elation over the fall had been replaced by worry and pessimism about the future.  Although a full two years has elapsed since then, very little has happened to improve matters.  In fact, with the possible exception of Poland and maybe Hungary, things have become worse.  There is more fragmentation, more economic hardship, and more ethnic strife.  There is now a Czech and a Slovak republic.  The situation in Bosnia has become unspeakable, and the possibility of more of the same in Kosovo and Macedonia seems real.  Things in Russia and the other parts of the FSU are more perilous than ever and in some places things are so bad that the communist past seems like the "good old days."  Nevertheless, at least some of the authors in this current issue find serious grounds for optimism.
    This issue was meant to consider the various ways in which we see each other's pasts and presents.  For example, to what extent can the history of Western transitions to democracy inform the transitions now going on in Central and East Europe.  To what extent are the issues raised by American feminists shared by women living through the transition who have had very different experiences?  Similar questions arise about the creation of viable constitutions and viable economies.  Can our constitutions serve as proper models and does what mistakenly is called our "free market" system offer the magical solutions that seem so desperately needed?  These questions and others as well are discussed in the papers in this issue.  Reading them should cause us to be more cautious in recommending our way as the right or only way to arrive at the desired goals which we share.
    I suspect that this may be the last of the issues in this series devoted entirely to East and Central Europe.  This is so not because the problems of the region are any more likely to to evaporate than our own, or because there is not much more of interest that could be said.  Rather it is because the rationale for these special issues is no longer so compelling.  The first of these issues was designed to give a voice to East and Central European social theorists who were not and could not be heard, certainly by their colleagues in the West.  The issues that followed dealt with the problems of transitions.  But even through the problems of transitions will continue into the foreseeable future, it is no longer intellectually justifiable to think of the countries making up Central and Eastern Europe as forming one region facing similar problems just because they shared a communist past.  The problems and conditions of life in Poland or the Czech Republic are as different from the problems faced by Armenians or even Ukrainians as our own problems are different from the problems faced by other Western countries.    All of the issues in this special series were made possible by the generosity of the CEEPP.  We are extremely grateful to them not only for the funds they provided which permitted us to collect papers and pay for their translation but also for their encouragement.  The fact that they thought these issues were valuable was extremely important to us.     Arien Mack
 
 

Reiner Schurmann (1941-1993)                                                                                                          v

The East Faces West; The West
Faces East

Editor's Introduction                                                                                                                            647

The Politics of Social Policy in
East European Transitions:
Antecedents, Agents, and
Agenda of Reform                                                          Claus Offe                                                   649

Is It Possible To Be Optimistic
About Eastern Europe?                                                 Gale Stokes                                                685

Slovakia: The Identity
Challenges of the Newly Born                                      Martin Butora and
State                                                                          Zora Butorova                                                705

Backlash                                                                     Jirina Siklova                                                737

Intellectuals in Politics: Double
Dissent in the Past, Double
Disappointment Today                                                 Petr Pithart                                                751

The Dynamics of Social
Problems and Czechoslovak
Transition                                                                    Jiri Kabele                                                    763

The Articulation and
Institutionalization of Democracy                                 Arista Maria Cirtautas and
in Poland                                                                     Edmund Mokrzycki                                        787

The Disappearing State: Poland's
Three Years of Transition                                             Jacek Kochanowicz                                        821

Polish Economists Lag Behind
Changes in the Economy                                              Jan Kulig and Adam Lipowski                        835

Why I Am Not a Feminist: Some
Remarks on the Problem of
Gender Identity in the United
States and Poland                                                     Mira Marody                                                    853

Our Futureless Values: The                                         Gyorgy Csepeli, Tamas Kolosi,
Forms of Justice and Injustice                                     Maria Nemenyi, and
Perception in Hungary in 1991                                      Anatal Orkeny                                                865

Political Uses of Tradition in
Postcommunist East Central
Europe                                                                         Gabor Gyani                                                893

The Revolution: The Beginning                                     Pavel Campeanu and
of the Transition                                                           Stefana Steriade                                            915
 
 

Martin Butora is associate professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences at Charles Univeristy in Prague.

Zora Butorova is a researcher at the Center for Social Analysis in Bratislava.

Pavel Campeanu is professor and director of the Independent Center of Social Studies and Opinion Polling in Bucarest.

Arista Maria Cirtautas is an instructor in the Department of Government at Claremont McKenna College.

Gyorgy Csepeli is professor of social psychology at the Institute of Sociology at ELTE in Budapest.  His most recent work is "Coping with the Conflict Between Backwardness and Modernity in Eastern Europe: Fascism, Communism, What's Next" (1993).

Gabor Gyani is senior research fellow at the Institute of History, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and the editor of the critical quarterly Buksz.

Jiri Kabele is head of the Department of Sociology and Social Policy in the Faculty of Social Sciences at Charles University in Prague.

Jacek Kochanowicz is associate professor of economic history at Warsaw University.  His most recent work is "Transition to Market in a Comparative Perspective: A Historian's Point of View" in Kazimierz Z. Poznanski, ed., Stabilization and Privatization in Poland: An Economic Evaluation of the Shock Therapy (1993).

Tamas Kolosi is professor of sociology at Tarki in Budapest.  His most recent work (with I. Szeleny) is "Social Change and Research on Social Structure in Hungary, 1960-1990," in B. Nedelmann and P. Sztompka, eds., European Sociology (1992).

Jan Kulig is professor of internatonal and development economics at the Warsaw School of Economics and the Economics Institute, Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw.  He and Adam Lipowski recently wrote "Macroeconomics 'Shock Therapy' in Eastern Europe: A Response of State-Owned Enterprises" (January 1994).

Adam Lipowski is professor of economics and head of the Department of Economic Policy at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw.

Mira Marody is professor of sociology and social psychology at the Institute of Sociology and director of the Institute for Social Studies at the University of Warsaw.

Edmund Mokrzycki is professor of philosophy and sociology at the Polish Academy of Sciences.

Maria Nemenyi is affiliated with the Has Institute of Sociology in Budapest.

Claus Offe is professor of political science and sociology at the University of Bremen.

Antal Orkeny is associate professor of sociology at the Institute of Sociology, Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest.  He recently wrote (with Gyorgy Csepeli) "Conflicting Loyalties, Citizenship, and National Identity in Hungary and Eastern Europe," in Russel F. Farnen, ed., Reconceptualizing Politics, Socialization and Education: International Perspectives for the 21st Century (1993).

Petr Pithart was the first postcommunist Prime Minister of the Czech Republic and a visting professor at Hunter College.

Jirina Siklova is a sociologist at Charles University, Prague.  She has participated in all of the Social Research special issues on East and Central Europe and has recently contributed  "Dilemmas of Transition" to the Peace Review (1992).

Stefana Steriade works at the Center of Social Studies and Opinion Polling in Bucarest.

Gale Stokes is professor of history at Rice University.  His most recent book is The Walls Came Tumbling Down:  The Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe (1993).