ABSTRACT
What is the relevance of the past - namely, of the inter-war period - for the transforming (post-communist) economies of Central and Eastern Europe, in general, and for Romania, in particular. There are at least two explanations for trying to answer such a question. One is the exceptionalism of the process of post-communist transformation in human history, which makes most of Eastern European economists - in an almost inescapable way - 'intellectual opportunists'. By the latter expression is meant the overwhelming and compelling intellectual appeal of contemporary events, which guide and almost program our research agenda.] The second reason is the teaching role of history. For, on one hand, the flow of historical events and their analytical interpretation lie at the roots of the growth of our hard core theoretical and policy-oriented knowledge. On the other hand, history has an influence on the flow of current events in the sense of what development theorists name pathdependency; where the latter refers to the burden of the past, and in the case of Central and Eastern Europe, to the legacy of its backwardness, which goes deeply into history. Consequently, apart from specifics of the period under scrutiny, this chapter tries to capture commonalties and discontinuities along the secular quest for modernisation in Romania. It tries also to suggest some of what may lie ahead in the light of the author's perceptions and, unavoidably, of his intellectual biases.
