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But in this regard women in socialist countries did not differ so much from women in the West. In fact, consumerism also pressures Western women to spend most of their free time shopping, and housework remains a burden for women even in the most democratic societies. The difference between East European and Western societies lies in the East European refusal to acknowledge the problem of patriarchal domination. Just as communist ideology erased the problem of patriarchal domination, today’s post-socialist societies also erase the problem of sexual inequality.

The liberalization of the Party encouraged the emergence of new opposition newspapers, and even the official media openly criticized the government. This liberalization of the Party was led by the head of the Party, Alexander Dubcek, and it had the support of almost 90 per cent of the population. This movement ended with the arrival of the Soviet army. But what actually stopped democratization was not open repression. Much more effective was the hidden ‘restoration of order’. How did this restoration happen?

Such outspokenness is possible for the SNP because it has a declared nationalistic stand while other right-wing parties cloak their nationalism in Catholic or populist ideology. But the real paradox is that, on another level, the SNP openly says what the Left is unable to say. Declared nationalism enables the SNP to object to the return of the confiscated forest to the Church on grounds that the forest is a Slovenian national treasure, to cherish the past partisan struggle against fascism while The post-socialist moral majority 37 criticizing fascist collaborators among the Slovenes, etc.