Crisis And Reform In Eastern Europe

Communism in Eastern Europe is in crisis. Its dimensions are social and economic; its manifestation is political. This volume, a collection of essays by leading authorities, describes the symptoms of the crisis, diagnoses the causes of the malady, and offers alternative scenarios for therapy. A unique dimension of this collection is its avoidance of one-dimensional explanations. The contributors approach the subject from very different angles, and start from very distinct sociopolitical premises. The volume includes original accounts of unexplored aspects of East European communism as well as classic interpretations of the economic crisis and social stagnation that characterize the area. Contributions not only examine the sociopolitical behavior of the ruling apparatus, but also analyze its strategies, political culture, and the opposition. Both the professional and the general reader seeking more information about Eastern Europe will find this volume an extensive, in-depth portrait of the current situation in what many observers predict may develop into the major area of tension in post-World War II Europe.

Economic reform - the introduction of elements of the market into a planned economy - has been the central political problem for socialist states for at least three decades. This book seeks to elucidate the nature of the problem through a reconsideration of the general theoretical issues, and through a comparative analysis of the practice of economic reform in two countries - Czechoslovakia and Hungary.

The global financial crisis has provided an important opportunity to revisit debates about post-socialist transition and the relative success of different reform paths. Post-communist Central and Eastern Europe (CEECs) in particular show resilience in the wake of the international crisis with a diverse range of economic transformations. Transformation and Crisis in Central and Eastern Europe offers an in depth analysis of a diverse range of countries, including Poland, Hungary, Russia, Ukraine, Czech Republic and Slovakia. This volume assesses each country’s institutional transformations, geopolitical policies, and local adaptations that have led them down divergent post-communist paths. Chapters take the reader systematically through the evolution of former communist national economic systems, before ending with lessons and conclusions for the future. Subsequent chapters demonstrate that economic performance crucially depends on achieving a sustainable balance between sound institutional design and policies on one hand, and localization on the other. This new volume from a prestigious group of academics offers a fascinating and timely study which will be of interest to all scholars and policy makers with an interest in European Economics, Russian and East European Studies, Transition Economies, Political Economy and the post-2008 world more generally.

A History of Eastern Europe: Crisis and Change is a wide-ranging single volume history of the "lands between", the lands which have lain between Germany, Italy, and the Tsarist and Soviet empires. Bideleux and Jeffries examine the problems that have bedevilled this troubled region during its imperial past, the interwar period, under fascism, under communism, and since 1989. While mainly focusing on the modern era and on the effects of ethnic nationalism, fascism and communism, the book also offers original, striking and revisionist coverage of: * ancient and medieval times * the Hussite Revolution, the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation * the legacies of Byzantium, the Ottoman Empire and the Hapsburg Empire * the rise and decline of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth * the impact of the region's powerful Russian and Germanic neighbours * rival concepts of "Central" and "Eastern" Europe * the 1920s land reforms and the 1930s Depression. Providing a thematic historical survey and analysis of the formative processes of change which have played the paramount roles in shaping the development of the region, A History of Eastern Europe itself will play a paramount role in the studies of European historians.

The transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, among all emerging- and developing-economy regions, have been hardest hit by the global economic crisis of 2008-09. This is partly due to the region s deep integration into the global economy across many dimensions trade, financial, and labor flows. Attempts by countries that came later to the transition to catch up rapidly to Western European living standards at a time when global liquidity was unusually abundant, together with some policy weaknesses, made them vulnerable to reversals in market sentiment. Written on the eve of the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, 'Turmoil at Twenty' analyzes the run-up to the current crisis and addresses a number of key questions related to vulnerability to the recession, expected recovery, and necessary reforms in the region: Did the transition from command to market economies, and the period during which this took place, plant the seeds of vulnerability that made transition countries more prone to crisis than other developing countries? Did the choices made on the road from plan to market shape the ability of crisis-hit countries to recover? What combination of domestic policy reform and international collective action is needed to bring about a recovery and minimize the humanitarian cost of the crisis? What structural reforms are needed today to address the most binding constraints on growth in a world where capital fl ows to transition and developing countries are expected to be considerably lower than before the crisis? 'Turmoil at Twenty' will be of interest to policy makers and their advisers, researchers, and students of economics who seek lessons from the current economic crisis, as well as scholars of the transition.

Based on Wilton Park Conference 328, 31 October - 4 November 1988. PRICE REDUCTION TO £1.00 1997

Crisis and Reform provides an excellent overview of the ecclesiastical structures in Eastern Slavic lands from their Christianization to the late sixteenth century.

Explains the surprising endurance of neoliberal policymaking over two decades in post-Communist countries, from 1989-2008, and its decline after the financial crash.

The author discusses the traditional system of management of the economy as it existed in the early 1950s in the USSR and goes on to deal with the reforms of the 1960s and of the 1980s, country by country. He shows that the focus of the reforms is on finding a proper combination of planning and the market mechanism, and their success will be judged