Vodka and Pickled Cabbage

For many decades, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union lived under communist rule, their economies governed by central planning. Suddenly the Berlin Wall was opened in 1989, the Iron Curtain was torn down; the communist system collapsed and soon the whole region was in a ferment, politically and economically. What happened to industry and businesses in the post-communist era? The travails of transition economics is Professor Hare's chosen subject in this highly informative and delightfully readable economic odyssey. His travels take him all over, from Vorkuta in Northern Russia to Almaty in Kazakhstan and Chisinau in Moldova. In Budapest, St Petersburg and Moscow, we are on more familiar ground: dimly lit hotels, vodka and pickled cabbage, rationed toilet paper and pickpockets... but there are wonderful moments, too, of international hospitality and close encounters of a reconstructionist kind (a banya is great at disinhibiting). Professor Hare's analysis of the emerging market-type economies of the former Soviet bloc, their accession to the EU and the prospects for the CIS countries is superb. An apostle of change, he also explains for the layperson what economists actually do. With a sly dig at academic dirigisme, he unmasks with a deft touch a science which is as protean as the political system it upholds. Here is an academic text with a human face. Paul Hare has been Professor of Economics at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, since 1985. He has researched, travelled in and written about Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union for nearly four decades, and wrote the present book to bring this fascinating region to a wider audience.