Backgrounds of Economic Transition in Central and Eastern Europe

The phenomenon of societal 'transition' is generally not well understood. After the demolition of the Berlin Wall in 1989, taking away in its slipstream the entire Iron Curtain, most discussions about the shift from central planning to a market based organisation of society were fairly one-dimensional. As if there was just was one way to go after leaving the domain of the ubiquitous Central Plan - to Capitalism and its 'free markets'. In what follows we first distinguish between different economic systems, after which the concepts of privatization resp. transition are defined and analysed, and the economic developments in Central and Eastern Europe over the past odd decade are interpreted against that background.