ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to collect a variety of possible explanations that have emerged, since 1989, for lags in economic improvement after the termination of doctrinaire Marxist rule in the Communist-governed countries. 1 It is important to note that some, or indeed many, of the disappointments noted here may be illusory, since the bases of comparison for what Marxist rule offered can be blurred by faulty memory or by the very notional and sloppy statistics that were maintained before 1989. Wherever the disappointments have been more real, however, it will be important to sort out the specific causes of delays in improvement; these may relate less to an overall comparison of market and command approaches to economic management than to some specific prerequisites for a functioning market system, prerequisites that in some situations have been difficult to re-establish.
