The moderate-radical paradigm did not always explain the behavior of those involved. While two basic camps emerged, the individuals in those camps shifted their positions depending on the circumstances. Perhaps more than anything, the driving factor was not ideology or strategy, but the power struggles within the group. The Democratic Party was not Solidarity in Poland or Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia, which had confronted communism on principle. The party founders were not dissidents who had challenged power at personal expense.
In retrospect, it is predictable that people like Berisha and Pashko rose to the top. These men spoke foreign languages and understood economics and international politics better than the others. They embodied the paradox throughout the former Soviet bloc that those equipped to govern in the new system were those who had benefited from the old.
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