Three decades after the collapse of state socialism in Eastern Europe, where should a history of post-socialist social justice start from? This chapter explores how questions of social justice in Eastern Europe after 1989 emerged against the background of policies of privatization – the transfer of state assets to private hands – in public rhetoric and expert commentary. Taking a longer historical perspective, the chapter shows how the notion of a ‘popular’ or ‘people’s capitalism’ came to be instrumental in framing debates about wealth redistribution and mass entrepreneurship after decades of dictatorship in virtually all countries of the former Communist Bloc. The chapter concludes with some remarks on the wider implications of this regional experience for a history of social justice in the European twentieth century and beyond.