The survey reveals both the failure of transition and a decisive break between central and eastern Europe. The shared brief episode of communism failed to homogenize these parts of the continent. Central Europe - including Slovenia - with its history of industrial capitalism, modern bureaucratic governance and the rule of law - is reverting to its historical default. It is being reintegrated into the European mainstream. The countries of east Europe - Poland included - are unable to catch up. Their transition is tortuous and unpopular among their subjects. Their lot is, indeed, improving but glacially and imperceptibly. They are being left behind by a largely indifferent West. Their erstwhile central European co-inmates in the gulag of communism are now keen to distance themselves. They are considered a drag and an embarrassment. Their unquenched hopes for a better future are smothered by insurmountable economic and social problems. European enlargement is likely to stall after the first intake of 10 new members in 2004. Those left out in the cold are excluded for a long stretch. Rather than relying on the double panacea of NATO and the EU, they would do well to start reforming themselves by bootstrapping. Surveys like these are timely reminders of this unpleasant reality. Left and Right in a Divided Europe By: Dr. Sam Vaknin Also published by United Press International (UPI) Even as West European countries seemed to have edged to the right of the political map - all three polities of central Europe lurched to the left. Socialists were elected to replace economically successful right wing governments in Poland, Hungary and, recently, in the Czech Republic. This apparent schism is, indeed, merely an apparition. The differences between reformed left and new right in both parts of the continent have blurred to the point of indistinguishability. French socialists have privatized more than their conservative predecessors. The Tories still complain bitterly that Tony Blair, with his nondescript "Third Way", has stolen their thunder. Nor are the "left" and "right" ideologically monolithic and socially homogeneous continental movements. The central European left is more preoccupied with a social - dare I say socialist - agenda than any of its Western coreligionists. Equally, the central European right is less individualistic, libertarian, religious, and conservative than any of its Western parallels - and much more nationalistic and xenophobic. It sometimes echoes the far right in Western Europe - rather than the center-right, mainstream, middle-class orientated parties in power.