This volume brings together a diverse set of scholars to address the long theoretical, conceptual and political debate on the interpretation of "actually existing" socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. While the major paradigms - totalitarianism, neo-totalitarianism, revisionism, post-revisionism, modernization, and the world-system analysis - are well known in the Western (English-language) literature, the concept of state socialism, which has strong theoretical roots in Hungary (going back to the works of Gy