Some theses on how we can understand the strengthening of the so-called successor parties in our region. It seems the accendence of the "left" to government positions can give room to very limited hopes only.

Although the state socialist system did not give room for a labour market, there was indeed a reserve army, which was activated or passivised in various periods of economic policy. In this policy the employment of women was given a peculiar role, and the related labour policy was strongly interlinked with social policy and other policy areas.

The author is confronting the opinions claiming that the changes in social structures of the recent years and decades lead to the end of social democracy. Quoting a number of documents and politicians, he illustrates how individual parties and their leaders answered the new challenges in Western Europe, and to what extent the various programmes insist upon the traditions and historic achievements of the century old movement.

In this issue of Eszmélet, we have asked prominent historians to tell their opinion why state socialism had developed. Of course a debate has emerged whether this term can be used at all to describe the social system of the so-called "forty years". This period – over which we have better and better historic overview – is characterised from different angles by articles on the Cold War, the history literature of the "seventy years", the special status of women labour and on the collapse of the system. We return to a question posed in the 20^th issue: what is the historical path of social democracy and what alternatives it offers nowadays?

Was the emergence of the state socialist system an historic accident? Can we see "those forty years" as a modernisation experiment, or it was only a path of maldevelopment forced upon us by great power agreements? One can often face these questions in public discussions, but now it is leading Hungarian historians who try to give an answer.