ABSTRACT
Large scale privatization of state assets is the distinctive feature of the recent transformation of Central Eastern European economies, with respect to all earlier attempts at reforming the Soviet-type system. Poland was among the first in announcing it (September 1989) and launching it (with the Law on Privatization of State Enterprises, 13 July 1990); Hungary’s earlier initiative (1988) was designed to regulate spontaneous private appropriation by insiders rather than to radically transform the system, while Yugoslavia’s 1989 privatization law applied to a different ownership regime. Poland already had a significant private sector on the eve of transformation, not only in agriculture but also in nonagricultural sectors. In 1989 private agriculture amounted to 75 per cent of the land, about 10 per cent of GDP and 21 per cent of employment (see Rapacki and Linz, 1992); in the 1980s non-agricultural private activities trebled to about 10 per cent of GDP and employment, including manufacturing as well as traditionally private activities such as trade, catering, services.
