The paper builds on previously established research results according to which the alleged superiority of the socialist institutional order is an abominable fallacy. The main point in proving that the old systems had in fact been inferior consists in underlining their unsustainability. The high rates of growth achieved in some past socialist periods are not the true indicators of the old systems' efficiency, because they could not be maintained permanently. The central points of the paper relate to the misperception about the socialist system having been satisfactorily efficient, and to the abysmal consequences of the socialist institutional heritage. The transition crises are the product of the old system, and ascribing them to the market-based system is a grave error. Moreover, the legacies of the old system fatally constrain the workings of the new one and prevent it from realizing its full potential. The systemic change has not only been accompanied by false ideas about comparative efficiency of the alternative arrangements but, more than that, it made it possible and revealed the harmful effects of the socialist past on the reaches and true potentialities of the new decentralized and private property based institutional order.