From Marxist Command Economies to Market Capitalism

Abstract

One of the remarkable changes since the fifth edition of this book has been the collapse of the ‘Evil Empire.’ The Berlin Wall is now in pieces in hundreds of museums, and Eastern Europe has moved west and has been rechristened Central Europe. The USSR — the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics — is no long a union, no longer soviet, and far from socialist. What had been the Soviet Union is now Russia and 12 or so independent republics, some less independent than others and few republican. Poland and its neighbors have moved from coerced dependence on Moscow to becoming parts of the global market economy. The Baltic Countries — Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania — have regained the independence they lost in 1939. Ukraine, which had been part of Russia for more than 100 years before the Russian revolution, is now an independent country — one continually at odds with Russia over the price of natural gas, the charges for the use of the pipelines, and access to naval bases on the Black Sea.