The Emergence of Market Economies in Eastern Europe (original) (raw)
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THE ASCEND AND DESCEND OF COMMUNISM IN EAST-CENTRAL EUROPE: AN HISTORICALOPINIONATED ANALYSIS
The year of 1989 marked a turning point in world history. During the last six months of that year, the world witnessed the collapse of communism in East-Central Europe. Two years later, communism was abolished in the Soviet Union, and that country began to fall apart. These changes were stunning and unprecedented in terms of their breadth, depth, and speed. In 1989, Hungary and Poland led the way, though cautiously. In February of that year, the Hungarian communist party leadership officially sanctioned the emergence of opposition parties the beginning of the end of the party's monopoly of power. In Poland a few months later, after a long series of roundtable negotiations between the communist party leadership and the opposition, the regime agreed to partially contested elections to the country's national legislature. Within the countries of East-Central Europe, the social, economic, and political changes were as fundamental as were those in France and Russia after their revolutions. In every country in the region the transition to Western style parliamentary democracy meant a fundamental restructuring of the political system, a proliferation of new interest groups and parties, and upheaval within the bureaucracy and administration. At the same time, all of these new regimes attempted an economic transition from centrally planned economies to market-oriented ones with increasing degrees of private ownership of property. Trying to accomplish both of these transitions simultaneously, from authoritarianism to pluralism and from plant to market, was a huge task, and the two occasionally pulled against each other.
Atlantic Economic Journal, 1995
Assessments of postcommunist economic reforms by systems specialists and those stewarding G-7 assistance are sharply polarized. Both acknowledge that official Eastern European data indicate catastrophic falls in GNP far deeper than the Great Depression of 1929 and a myriad of other failures including rampant inflation, anticompetitive abuses, graft, corruption, and the persistence of socialist ownership and controls. But while the former interpret these outcomes as a consequence of the communist legacy and transmuted anticompetitive institutions, the latter in Schumpeterian fashion interpret them as a successful prelude to competitive capitalism, as the postcommunist East traverses the J curve of recovery to rapid modernization. This essay surveys the recent literature and, siding with the systems theorists, explains why the G-7's interpretation of macroindicators is misleading.
In 1989, 30 years had passed since the fall of communism – a system installed in Central and Southern Europe following World War II. The changes which took place in 1989–1991 were the beginning of a political transformation in the states of Central and Southern Europe as well as in the Soviet Union. The triple transformation encompassed the reconstruction of free market economy, parliamentary democracy, and – in the case of the former Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, or Czechoslovakia – state building. The aim of the conference is, in particular, to analyze, in the comparative perspective: – the role and significance of the opposition in particular societies of Central and Eastern Europe, – the position and role of churches and denominational associations in the transformation process, – various paths of the transition from the totalitarian system in the communist version to a democratic one in particular states of Central and Eastern Europe, combined with an attempt at a verification of various models of the fall of communism (the domino effect, structural contradictions of centrally planned economy, the breakdown of the faith in Marxism, etc.) – strategies (or the lack thereof) of implementing free market economy, – relationships of the states of Central and Eastern Europe with the external world: the USSR, the USA, EEC, and NATO, and attitudes toward globalization processes, – settlement of the communist past in the form of lustration and decommunization, and the presence of communism in historical memory. Place and time of conference: Poznań, Poland, 24 June, 2019
Eastern European Economic Reform: Transition or Mutation?
Atlantic Economic Journal, 1995
Assessments of postcommunist economic reforms by systems specialists and those stewarding G-7 assistance are sharply polarized. Both acknowledge that official Eastern European data indicate catastrophic falls in GNP far deeper than the Great Depression of 1929 and a myriad of other failures including rampant inflation, anticompetitive abuses, graft, corruption, and the persistence of socialist ownership and controls. But while the former interpret these outcomes as a consequence of the communist legacy and transmuted anticompetitive institutions, the latter in Schumpeterian fashion interpret them as a successful prelude to competitive capitalism, as the postcommunist East traverses the J curve of recovery to rapid modernization. This essay surveys the recent literature and, siding with the systems theorists, explains why the G-7's interpretation of macroindicators is misleading.
The Rise and Fall of Soviet and Eastern European Communism: An Historical Perspective
According to the author, this paper deals with the issue of Marxist criticism of the origins and political system of the Soviet and Eastern European socialism. At the same time the author argues that this social and economic and political formation play an important and at least in some part positive role in the history of the involved Nations. Their collapse which was caused by both Western pressure and corruption and moral crisis of the ruling their elites open a new and often painful and unpredictable period for their affected nation. The author would also like to indicate that the impact of the collapse of this Eastern European socialism made a great impact on he International system as a whole.