This article explores the post-socialist system transformation in East Central European countries since 1989 both theoretically and practically. It examines its historical characteristics and criticizes the views that this region has institutionally matured to a full-blooded market economy. Instead, the author holds that there is still a long way to go. The article emphasizes the transition process of post-socialist market transformation won’t develop perpendicularly. There is a substantial difference between market reforms of a real socialism economy and a post-socialist market transformation. The transformation results would have been better for various countries to various extents if the objectives had been more accurately determined and the systemic transformation had been treated not as a self-contained aim but as an instrument to achieve the superior aim.