INTRODUCTION

The most dramatic event in political economy to happen since the Great Depression of the 1930s was the collapse of the Soviet system and its satellites in the late 1980s. The Soviet admissions of the failure of their economic system to provide a decent standard of living to its people, let alone keep pace with the technological advances of the West, caught most Western Sovietologists by surprise. Watching the developments (zigs and zags) of perestroika and glasnost became a full-time occupation for many economists.