ABSTRACT
The year 1989 was truly momentous in that it signified the failure of an entire system. ‘Socialism’ was to be replaced by some sort of ‘Western-type’ political and economic system in most of the fourteen countries studied in A Guide to the Socialist Economies. The Cold War, which had shaped and distorted post-Second World War history, was won by ‘the West’, it seems, but Boris Yeltsin more accurately describes it as a victory for both sides.1 The abortive August 1991 coup in the Soviet Union ironically put the final nail in the coffin; towards the end of the year the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Yugoslavia, too, has disintegrated and Comecon and the Warsaw Pact no longer exist.
