With rise of populism, illiberalism and xenophobia in EU’s Eastern Europe, a key question has become “what went wrong?”. A region considered a textbook example for transition, EU integration and democratisation, now writes alarming headlines almost every day. With the global West being caught in its own democratic retreat and the single countries becoming increasingly isolationist, it is too tempting to look for the same explanations and same solutions in every country. Our understanding is that Eastern Europe needs a different approach, which begins with a closer look into both communism and a variety of transitional experiences of the past.