Lustration and Legitimacy

For much of their existence, the Soviet-type regimes of Central and Eastern Europe were accused of suffering from a "legitimacy crisis". It is argued in this contribution that not only are such assumptions tainted by Cold War biases but that the nature of these regimes, combined with the inherent complexities of legitimacy, mean that such claims have limited credence. It proposes that studying a particular phenomenon in the post-communist world-in this case lustration-provides us with new insights into the legitimacy of the communist regimes in Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic and Poland. © 2010 University of Kent.