THE SOCIAL LEGACY OF COMMUNISM
THE SOCIAL LEGACY OF COMMUNISM

Summary/Abstract: The paper is divided into three parts. In the first part, the author presents an immanent criticism of Berliner's definition of the social legacy of communism as a "social contract" of sorts between the Party/State and population, within which he substituted "the civil society" in communist countries. The author warns that in this case there was no exchange of individual rights and freedoms for social privileges, but the "exchange" of legitimacy (in favor of the elite) for social rights and privileges (in favor of the employees). This exchange also included a dual communication between the elite and masses. In the second part, the author indicates that in 1983 he himself described this mechanism of legitimizing the power of the elite, which Berliner too considered the basis of social stability, as the theory on "the coalition between politocracy and physical workers", setting it into a broader context of socialism's abortive economic reforms. In the third part, by means of an analysis of cross-cultural empirical findings, "the communist legacy" in Croatia is said to be much less preserved than in other postcommunist countries.

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