ABSTRACT
The ex-Communist states of Eastern and Central Europe (ECE) and the former Soviet Union (FSU) encompass a population of more than 400 million people and an area that covers nearly 20 per cent of the world’s landmass. Since the early 1990s, they have been undergoing a process of deep systemic change, aimed at reforming the economic, political and social structures inherited from the Communist era. The new geopolitical situation has forced these countries ‘onto the economic geography agenda, not the least because the map of this part of the world has now been redrawn and there are many new states to be integrated into the world economy’ (Stenning and Bradshaw, 1999, p. 97).
