Economics of transition: A review article

Milford Bateman et al., Business Cultures in Central & Eastern Europe. Oxford: Butterworth‐Heinemann, 1997, xxii + 238 pp., £18.99.

John L. Campbell & Ove K. Pedersen (eds), Legacies of Change, Transformations of Postcommunist European Economies. Berlin: Aldine De Gruyter, 1996, xii + 258 pp., DM48.00.

Mark Knell (ed.), Economics of Transition, Structural Adjustments and Growth Prospects in Eastern Europe. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 1996, xii + 246 pp., £45.00.

Martin Myant et al., Successful Transformations? The Creation of Market Economies in Eastern Germany and the Czech Republic. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 1996 xiii + 267 pp., £49.95.     

Jobs and local action: A review article

A Working Community: A Report on the Role of a Local Authority in Creating Jobs, and the Problems of Reducing Unemployment, Southwark Borough Council, 1987, £2.50.

Manchester Employment Plan, City Council Economic Development Department, with Services to Community Action and Tenants, and the Manchester Employment Research Group Ltd, 1987, free.

Sheffield: Working it Out, An Outline Employment Plan for Sheffield, Sheffield City Council, 1987, free.

Real Needs ‐ Local Jobs, Parliamentary Spokesperson's Working Group (available from John Prescott MP, House of Common, London SW1A 0AA), 1987, £2.00.     

The Soviet ideology of industrialization : A review article

This paper studies reproductive behaviour (ideal family size, completed family size and family planning acceptance) in a rural Indian area which was rapidly industrialising. Two castes and eleven villages were sampled. It was found that family planning was quite common and that fertility differentials among couples were related to the couples’ unique socioeconomic characteristics as well as to two group level variables (caste and village). The latter result was shown to be statistically significant, for all three measures of reproductive behaviour, even after many unique socioeconomic characteristics and attitudes of each couple were accounted for statistically.     

Stalin and the cold war: A review article

Caroline Kennedy‐Pipe, Stalin's Cold War: Soviet Strategies in Europe, 1943 to 1956. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995, 218 pp., £40.00 h/b, £14.99 p/b.

R. C. Raack, Stalin's Drive to the West, 1938–1945: The Origins of the Cold War. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995, 265 pp., £35.00 h/b.     

First Russian biographies of Trotsky: A review article

N. A. Vasetsky, Trotskii. Opyt politicheskoi biografii. Moscow: Respublika, 1992, 351 pp. D. Volkogonov, Trotskii. Politicheskii portret. II Vols. Moscow: Novosti, 1992, 412 & 412 pp.     

Beyond the Cold War in Europe: A review article

Vilho Harle & Jyrki Iivonen, ed., Gorbachev and Europe. Pinter Publishers, London, 1990, xi+213 pp., £28.50.

Richard Davy, ed., European Detente: A Reappraisal. The Royal Institute of International Affairs, Sage Publications, London, 1992, viii+277 pp., £35.00.

Richard H. Ullman, Securing Europe. Adamantine Press, Twickenham, 1991, xv+183 pp., £13.50.     

Science and technology in the transition: A review article

David A. Dyker (ed.), The Technology of Transition: Science and Technology Policies for Transition Countries. Budapest: Central European University Press, 1997, ix + 292 pp., £37.50.

Mark Steven Frankel & Jane Cave (eds), Evaluating Science and Scientists: An East‐West Dialogue on Research Evaluation in Post‐Communist Europe. Budapest: Central European University Press, 1997, x + 226 pp., £37.50 h/b, £15.99 p/b.

Paul J. J. Welfens & George Yarrow (eds), Telecommunications and Energy in Systemic Transformation: International Dynamics, Deregulation and Adjustment in Network Industries. Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer‐Verlag, 1997, xi + 501 pp., DM178.00.     

Ten years of transition: a review article

Ten years after the launching of the transition process, many books and reports are offering a balance sheet of the transformation that occurred in Central and Eastern Europe and in the former Soviet Union area. The review article looks at some of them, particularly at Grzegorz W. Kolodko's book published in 2000, “From Shock to Therapy. The Political Economy of Postsocialist Transformation”. On the basis of this book and of some recent contributions, three major issues are discussed. First, why has there been such a recession in the beginning of the transition process in all countries, and was the recession inevitable? Second, due to the dire criticisms of the standard policy applied in these countries, dubbed the “Washington consensus”, has a “post-Washington consensus” emerged? Third, as we are already engaged in the second decade of the transition process, can we state when it is bound to be over, and what role is played by the European Union enlargement in accelerating the end of transition?     

On Soviet‐German relations: The debate continues—A review article

Aleksandr M. Nekrich, Pariahs, Partners, Predators: German‐Soviet Relations, 1922–1941. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997, xiv + 308 pp., £28.00.     

From Marxism to nationalism: The Chinese Communist Party's discursive shift in the post-Mao era

The Chinese Communist Party's dramatic shift from Mao Zedong's Chinese Revolution to Xi Jinping's Chinese Dream remains under-examined and even misunderstood or mispresented despite its enormous impact on every aspect of national life in the People's Republic of China. There is a clear need for in-depth analysis of the extent to which the CCP has departed from the philosophical foundation of Marxism and Maoism, abandoned socialism and communism, inverted its long tradition of iconoclasm, transformed its own identity and altered its subject position. Part of the CCP's philosophical departure from Marxism and Maoism is its increasing conversion to nationalism. The new nationalism underpinning the Chinese Dream, in particular, operates against the grain of Marxism and Maoism, and vice versa, and is logically irreconcilable with the latter – so much so that the CCP cannot be nationalists and Marxists, Maoists or communists at the same time. The contradictory logics between nationalism and Marxism can be best seen from their respective conceptions of permanence and change, the unity and conflict of opposites, and conceptions of, and approaches to, tradition and the past, which have had major ramifications in political-cultural change in post-Mao China, especially in Xi's New Era.     

Rewriting and remembering Romanian communism: some controversial issues

This article examines the dynamic relationship between the two major dimensions of memory and justice in the context of post-communist countries: truth-telling and retroactive justice. This interdependent and uneasy relationship is illustrated by recent attempts at constructing a new historical narrative of the communist past in Romania in the wake of the de-secretization of the files of both the Communist Party and the communist secret police (Securitate). A systematic analysis of the activity of institutions that have been directly involved in research and public education about the recent past – the National Archives, the National Council for the Study of Securitate's Archives, and the Institute for the Investigation of Crimes of Communism – is undertaken. The work of these three institutional actors shows a direct relationship between truth-telling in its various forms (access to archives, opening the files and exhumations) and any subsequent retroactive justice and restitution. The main argument of the paper is that while deep-seated dichotomies between former communist and anti-communists in addressing the past still persist, a more nuanced way of seeing the regime that explores the ambiguous line that divides outright repression from cooptation is emerging.     

Karl Marx and the economics of communism: anniversary recollections

This paper grew out of the author's Karl Marx studies and his practical knowledge of Soviet-type communist economies. It covers a broad spectrum of ideas and practices prevalent in those economies, which— rightly or wrongly—have become associated with Marx's teaching and predictions. Chapter I tries to explain the reasons for Marx's continuous popularity. Chapter II critically examines the validity of the claim about Marxian socialism being “scientific” as opposed to “utopian”. The article, especially in chapter III elaborates on a number of other Marxian ideas, like that of the so-called “anarchy of the market”, which for many decades exerted a negative influence on his followers—theoreticians and practitioners engaged in building what they believed to be a communist economy and society. One of the quintessential features of Marx's teaching, which he took over from Smith and Ricardo, was the labor theory of value and the “law of value” in particular. The latter, interpreted by Stalin as “the law of value under socialism”, was used by him for ideological and propaganda purposes, but after his death has in turn been utilized by Marxists, non-Marxists and anti-Marxists to discredit the Stalinist economic system, and to advance propositions ranking from profound, relevant and commendable to vague and frivolous. Tracing in Chapter IV the peripetia of this “law” provides a deeper insight into both the essential weaknesses of the Marxian theory and the acute dilemmas of the Soviet-type economies.     

Classical Marxism and Maoism: A comparative study

The issue of the Marxist character of “Mao Zedong Thought” has never really been resolved. The present work is a comparative analysis of the classical Marxism of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and the ideology of Mao Zedong. The argument is made that whatever Marxism there was in Maoism was the “creatively developed Marxism” of V. I. Lenin—which allowed for socialist revolution in retrograde economic circumstances—something that had been specifically rejected by Marx and Engels. That led to the theoretical idiosyncrasies that characterized Maoism throughout its history, and ultimately resulted in the form rejected by Deng Xiaoping and post-Maoist China.     

Constructing courts after communism: Reevaluating the effect of electoral uncertainty

A prominent view in political science is that electoral uncertainty leads institutional designers to prefer independent and powerful courts. Yet few scholars have examined the design of constitutional courts systematically across Eastern Europe and those who have employed the results of elections held after constitutions were adopted to estimate the actors' perceptions of the balance of power prior to the court's design. This work reevaluates the effects of electoral uncertainty in post-communist Europe using more appropriate data and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to outline the different causal configurations linking electoral uncertainty to the initial judicial empowerment.