Introduction

The competitive strength of countries successfully accomplishing post-communist transition has been one of the major surprises of the process in question. After all weaknesses and inefficiencies of the communist political-economic system have been most strongly visible precisely in communist countries’ external economic relations. And especially in their relations with the West. From Franklyn Holzman (1974, 1979) to the present writer (Winiecki, 1985, 1987, 1988) system-specific distortions, making export improvements difficult (if not impossible), have been pointed out many times by a range of specialists in comparative economics and Soviet studies.