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The Visegrad Countries of Eastern Europe

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Book cover European Economies Since the Second World War

Abstract

This chapter is, of necessity, different from the others in this volume. First, we must consider not only issues of growth and stagnation, but also failure, decay and final collapse. For the events of 1989 brought to a clear end the socialist experiment, or at least, a particular type of socialist experiment, in Central and Eastern Europe. Second, the role of politics takes on more importance, because, in the case of the countries which we now call the Visegrad Four (Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia), it was not governments pursuing policies to influence the economy, but rather planners who thought that they could dictate the pattern of output and the path of economic change. Third, because the cycles of growth, stagnation, decay and collapse were dictated primarily by problems encountered in trying to plan and only secondarily by developments in the international economy, the periodization is different (see Table 8.1).

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Authors
  1. Nigel J. Swain
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economic and Social History, University of Liverpool, UK

    Bernard J. Foley (Teacher) (Teacher)

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© 1998 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

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Swain, N.J. (1998). The Visegrad Countries of Eastern Europe. In: Foley, B.J. (eds) European Economies Since the Second World War. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-26565-7_8

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