ABSTRACT
The year 1990 marks the neoliberal turn of the revolutions of 1989. It was also the year when the West began to talk about a transition in Eastern Europe and loaded the term with a dual teleology. The neoliberal turn in Eastern Europe during 1990 and the subsequent global hegemony of neoliberalism came about as a result of intertwined discourses and paradigm shifts in the West and the East. The general rhetoric of the Balcerowicz plan was ‘sacrifices now, and gains in the future’. While communist modernization was mainly driven by internal resources and ideas of autarchy, Balcerowicz hoped that foreign direct investments would propel Poland out of its backwardness. The polemics against neoliberalism are a result of the close alliance of the ‘Chicago Boys’ with Reaganomics and Thatcherism. The German reforms occurred in the context of the second wave of neoliberalism, which began in the late 1990s.
