Initial elite and historical endowments differed sharply across East European communist parties before 1989.

Evidence

Therefore, as the parties geared up for their last congresses as communist parties, at which their regenerative strategies would be decided, they had at their disposal distinct configurations of both elite portable skills and usable pasts. As a result, the Czech party relied on its members and a relatively tired ideology, because it had few skilled elites or reform experience and a limited usable past. The Slovak party had a set of skilled new elites, but these had only untested policy proposals and little administrative know-how. The Polish party relied on its youthful elites and their earlier politicking experience, while the Hungarian party had not only a set of experienced, skilled elites, but also a usable past of political and economic liberalization. As we will see in the next chapter, these configurations would determine the success of the parties’ adaptive strategies. — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 363

Categorization

• XREF: This configurational-comparison framing maps directly onto the reader’s post-1989 communist successor question and aligns with the Skocpol/state-capacity school logic; also parallels resource-based explanations of organizational adaptation.