ABSTRACT
A Guide to the Socialist Economies was published in 1990. Covering fourteen communist countries (accounting, in mid-1988, for 1.6 billion out of a world population of 5.1 billion), the final amendments to the book had been made in early October 1989. Shortly afterwards communism collapsed in Eastern Europe, followed in late 1991 by the disintegration of the Soviet Union (the largest country in the world by area, covering a sixth of the world’s land area excluding Antarctica, and then a ‘superpower’ able to challenge the USA in terms of military capacity). Yugoslavia also disintegrated, and in a generally very bloody fashion. Academics like myself who had invested a lifetime in studying the communist countries saw their intellectual capital mostly vanish overnight. The effort of trying to comprehend profound changes, in many ways unique events and the multiplication of countries (as well as the disappearance of the GDR into a reunified Germany!) has been staggering.
