Does postmodern mean capitalist? This article attempts to answer this question by comparing postmodern neo-historicism in two late socialist contexts: the People's Republic of Poland, where in the 1980s the planned economy was progressively eroding and postmodern architecture mostly sponsored by non-state clients (private individuals, small housing cooperatives and the Catholic Church), and the German Democratic Republic, where in the 1980s the institutions of the state-planned economy remained in power and commissioned prominent postmodern projects. The article argues that while the different economic regimes did not lead to prominent stylistic discrepancies, they strongly influenced significance and perception of these projects in their particular national contexts.