First the Transition, then the Crash Eastern Europe in the 2000s
Pluto Press
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.
Contents:
1 Introduction: The Transition in Central and Eastern
Europe
Gareth Dale
2 Marx on 1989
G. M. Tamás
Part One Russia: class and power in the age
of Putin
3 Workers in Modern Russia
Mike Haynes
4 Russia’s Foreign Policy from Putin to Medvedev
Gonzalo Pozo
5 Autocratic Neoliberalism and Beyond: Russia’s
Caesarist Journey into the Global Political Economy
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
Jeff Sommers and Ja–nis Berzinš
7 The Ukrainian Economy and the International
Financial Crisis
Marko Bojcun
8 Poland and the Global Political Economy:
From Neoliberalism to Populism (and Back Again)
Stuart Shields
9 The Czech Republic: Neoliberal Reform and
Economic Crisis
Ilona Švihlíková
10 From Poster Boy of Neoliberal Transformation to
Basket Case: Hungary and the Global Economic Crisis
Adam Fabry
11 Serbia from the October 2000 Revolution to the Crash
Martin Upchurch and Darko Marinkovic
12 Conclusion: The ‘Crash’ in Central and Eastern Europe
Gareth Dale and Jane Hardy
Endorsements:
Central and Eastern Europe is a neoliberal horror story. The details
are well told here: of “grabitization” kleptocracies, NATO expansion
and capital flight. These well-packaged studies show how U.S.-
sponsored “reforms” de-industrialized Russia and other post-Soviet
states. ... This story needs to be known.’
(Michael Hudson, author of Super Imperialism (Pluto Press, 2003))
Radical political economy finally comes resurgent in the former
communist countries. Dale and his collaborators comprehensively cover
the transitions, from Hungary to the Russian Pacific. The best
alternative survey of how the post-communist entrants are faring in
21st-century capitalism.
(Georgi Derluguian, author of Bourdieu’s Secret Admirer in the
Caucasus: A World-Systems Biography)
This book provides a vital corrective to neoliberal triumphalism, and
a starting-point for socialist renewal.
(Hugo Radice, University of Leeds)
http://www.plutobooks.com/display.asp?K=9780745331157
Martin Upchurch
Professor of International Employment Relations
Middlesex University Business School
The Burroughs
Hendon
London NW4 4BT
07545 487952
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