Writing some ten years ago about the changing political situation in the Soviet Union, Allen Kassof made the astute observation, “Although liberalization tells something about where the Soviet system has come from, it does not say very much about where it is going. To say that the system is being liberalized is like walking away backward from a receding reference point, a procedure that gives too little information about what lies on the road ahead.” It is clear that this statement applies with even greater force to Eastern Europe—even if we were to substitute “change” for “liberalization.” Anyone reckless enough to write about the prospects for change in Eastern Europe is faced with an almost impossible task, certainly a more difficult one than for the Soviet Union, or for that matter China, where at least there is, or was, a single reference point—be it Stalinism or Maoism, totalitarianism or the “administered society.”