Europe East

By Klaus Nielsen and Marguerite Mendell

On hearing the rhetoric of "democracy" and "free markets" that have propelled new Eastern European and former Soviet countries in the last six years, Westerners feel a twinge of doubt. Analysts wait with growing apprehension for market "self-regulation" to materialize.

These essays help to put the mass of changes in the former USSR and the eastern bloc into a larger historical and sociological perspective. The writers consider the social complexity which surrounds any political and economic system -- an "embeddedness," which establishes itself very slowly and over many years.

Inspired by the "great transformation" model Karl Polanyi substantiated, they analyse the changes as long evolutionary processes. Seen in this light, it is easier to understand why the surgical implants of the free market into eastern bloc and former Soviet countries have not been accepted without turbulent rejection.

Contributors include: John Campbell, Mihailo Crnobrnja, Agnes Czako & Endre Sik, Jerzy Hausner, Bob Jessop, Tadeusz Kowalik, Domenico Mario Nuti, Birgit Muller, Yakov M. Rabkin, Hilary Wainwright, and Claire Wallace.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1895431905
• ISBN13: 9781895431902
• Release Date: June 1995
• Publisher: Black Rose Books
• Length: 298 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.2" x 8.1"