Michael cannot be said to have encouraged monarchist agitation in Romania and royalist parties have made little impact in post-communist Romanian politics.

But on another level it is a telling lesson in the murkiness of post-Communist politics here, where the main opposition party lies cozily in bed with the government 11 years after the Velvet Revolution overturned Communism.

After all, terms derived from the seating arrangement of the French Estates General two centuries ago and the way political activists distributed themselves there are likely not to fit post-Communist politics.

But the balance has shifted with the Soviet collapse, and a complex new world of post-Communist politics is being defined in the Caucasus.

But for all his reticence, Mr. Pawlak is a fairly well-known player in the post-Communist politics of Poland.

The indulgence of separate sovereignties and caution about union relations are now the hallmark of post-Communist politics in the republics, where views differ on how to deal with de facto membership in the nuclear club.

Richard Sakwa (born 1953) is an expert in the field of Russian and Eastern European communist and post-communist politics.

Her research interests include comparative European politics, political parties and party systems in Europe, democratisation, Southern Europe, and post-communist politics.

The politician who emerged to effect a privatization that still dwarfs every other such exercise many times over is one of the most remarkable figures of post-Communist politics.

It is one sign among many that the country is at last moving away from post-communist politics and towards modern European democracy.