ABSTRACT
In the Former Soviet Union, agriculture was a sector of exceptional stability relative to other sectors of the economy. Even in the late 1980s, the notion that the agricultural sector and its socialized, large-scale units of production would ever change was unimaginable. Countries with a significant agricultural export potential, such as the Ukraine or Romania, could export mass-produced commodities such as grains, oil seed and oil, or sugar, possibly with the benefit of export subsidies. Other Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) countries will likely enter the European market with more highly processed goods, displacing local products. The people of CEE have abandoned the battered and run-down ship of Soviet state socialism and jumped into a churning sea of economic and social transformation. Russia, with its vast territory that stretches over two continents, is likely to remain outside the European Union.
