Communism’s Shadow: Historical Legacies and Contemporary Political Attitudes

Communism’s Shadow (Princeton University Press), by Princeton professor Grigore Pol-Eleches of the Woodrow Wilson School and NYU politics professor Joshua Tucker, examines the impact of communism on postcommunist states. The authors turn their focus to attitudes among citizens and attempt to explain differences among attitudes of citizens in postcommunist countries to the attitudes their counterparts in other countries. They conclude that in most cases, the longer citizens live through communism, the less supportive they are of democracy, and the more supportive they are generally of state-provided social welfare and other communist ideological tenets — with the exception of gender equality.