Amantine is the heroine of the exceptional short story À Clairmont by Maryse Battistuzzi.[1] She is an old lady with a particular whim that makes other people wonder: when taking her tea she invariably leaves a small quantity in the bottom of her cup. To Amantine, to consume those last sips would doubtless amount “to drinking poison, to an offense, to braving unhappiness in some sort of way.” That is why this tiny remainder of liquid always ends up in the sink.

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There is a surprising paradox in the political life of post-communist societies. Surprising to traditional political values. The totalitarian communist parties in our countries have become socialist by name and conservative by stand. In the revolutionary process of transformation from a one-party state to a multi-party system, from a state-owned economy to a market economy, from no human rights to universal human rights, those parties supported a conservative approach; reforms were carried out by parties declared to be right-of-center.

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