Introduction

The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and its near total collapse in the former Soviet Union has forced scholars in the field to revisit some basic issues and raise many new ones. The countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are now engaged in building a replacement for the communist experiment. There is thus an obviously important need for scholarship addressing both the nature of the communist demise and the meaning of these recent developments. The next group of issues relate to the current efforts by Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the Commonwealth of Independent States, to reestablish competitive markets, particularly for capital. This often seems to be a rather straightforward and short-term task whose completion depends mostly on the will by post-communist leaders to embark upon it.