First the Transition, then the Crash

Comprehensive survey of the economic crisis in Eastern Europe

The 1989-91 upheavals in Eastern Europe sparked a turbulent process of social and economic transition. Two decades on, with the global economic crisis of 2008-10, a new phase has begun.

This book explores the scale and trajectory of the crisis through case studies of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Russia, Ukraine and the former Yugoslavia. The contributors focus upon the relationships between geopolitics, the world economy and class restructuring.

The book covers the changing relationship between business and states; foreign capital flows; financialisation and asset price bubbles; austerity and privatisation; and societal responses, in the form of reactionary populism and progressive social movements.

Challenging neoliberal interpretations that envisage the transition as a process of unfolding liberty, the dialectic charted in these pages reveals uneven development, attenuated freedoms and social polarisation.

1. Introduction: The Transition in Central and Eastern Europe by Gareth Dale
2. Marx on 1989 by G. M. Tamás
Part One Russia: class and power in the age of Putin
3. Workers in Modern Russia by Mike Haynes
4. Russia’s Foreign Policy from Putin to Medvedev by Gonzalo Pozo
5. Autocratic Neoliberalism and Beyond: Russia’s Caesarist Journey into the Global Political Economy by Owen Worth
Part Two From the Baltic to the Balkans: market reform and economic crisis
6. Twenty Years Lost: Latvia’s Failed Development in the Post-Soviet World by Jeff Sommers and Ja–nis Berzinš
7. The Ukrainian Economy and the International Financial Crisis by Marko Bojcun
8. Poland and the Global Political Economy: From Neoliberalism to Populism (and Back Again) by Stuart Shields
9. The Czech Republic: Neoliberal Reform and Economic Crisis by Ilona Švihlíková
10. From Poster Boy of Neoliberal Transformation to Basket Case: Hungary and the Global Economic Crisis by Adam Fabry
11. Serbia from the October 2000 Revolution to the Crash by Martin Upchurch and Darko Marinkovic
12. Conclusion: The ‘Crash’ in Central and Eastern Europe by Gareth Dale and Jane Hardy
Notes on Contributors
Index