EN
This paper investigates the effect of ‘Communist Affirmative Action’ on inequality in access to secondary and post-secondary education in five former socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe between 1948 and 1989. The author argues that earlier research failed to identify any periods of reduced inequality in former socialist countries because it employed inadequate definitions of both the dependent and independent variables. He corrects these inaccuracies and he investigates data from the ‘Social Stratification in Eastern Europe after 1989’ survey. The author is indeed able to document that inequality in access to education declined during the periods of the most extreme Communism in the early 1950s and, in some countries, also during the early 1970s.