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Before the year of revolution 1989, oppositions in Central Europe were, in Soviet and East European studies, by and large, regarded as marginal phenomena.¹ Certainly the emergence of Solidarity was a challenge to this priority, but no change in perspective seems to have occurred. Studies of politics in the region were reduced to studies of institutional politics and oppositions were consequently excluded or reduced. The 1989 systemic changes in the region should have changed this perception. The new governments in Central Europe are all based on previous opposition movements: Solidarity in Poland, Obcanské Forum in Czechoslovakia and Democratic Forum in Hungary. Thus important questions include the relation between continuity and change in Central European political culture and, more specifically, relations between the political culture of the oppositions and contemporary Central European politics. In this perspective, studies of the oppositions are not made obsolete as new political systems are introduced. On the contrary, such studies can be regarded as a precondition for the understanding of contemporary politics in Central Europe. If this view is accepted, the next question may be: do we know the political culture of the opposi­tions? To answer this question, a short digression into a subdepartment of Soviet and East European studies might be useful.

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-22174-5_3

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