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The policies of most communist parties in both Eastern and Western Europe had been governed by the example of the Soviet Union. Following the change to democracy and capitalism, many of those parties reacted by changing their left-wing policies to a more democratic and less radical course. The old rift in the Socialist movement between the revolutionaries and the democrats was therefore mostly eliminated as the democrats prevailed.
In Western European countries such as Italy or Germany, post-communism is marked by the increased influence of their existing Social Democrats. The "truely" communist parties didn't particularly prosper from it, in fact, some of them became less radical as well. In the former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the Communist Party generally split into transformed Social Democrat parties and more radical parties. The moderates generally maintained political power, whereas the radicals were usually marginalized.
The degree of leftist policies applied varies per country, but parties advocating a kind of a democratic socialism are possibly the strongest political power in Europe today.
Several communist countries had undergone economic reforms from a command economy towards a more market economy in the 1980s. The post-communist economic transition was much more thorough, and created many mixed economies. Some of the keywords of post-communism are:
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