Unhappy Between Worlds Cultures and People in the Post-Communist Transition – an Ethological Approach

The mean value of happiness in the former communist countries in the European Union is considerably lower than the mean value of happiness in Western European countries. Nostalgia for the former totalitarian regimes has grown to a so far unthinkable extent. Those afflicted by nostalgia (by the unhappiness of transition) seem to live in a no man’s land between two real worlds (the totalitarian and the democratic one), and an imaginary one (the utopian world created in their minds during decades of communist propaganda). The current work proposes an ethological and psycho-sociological approach of the fundamental mutations produced by communism and then by transition both at cultural and individual level. The only tried and tested antidote to frustration in the ex-communist space seems to be the „democratic happiness“.