ABSTRACT
The state’s privatization programmes, however, gave expression to the official policy, the purpose of which was to transfer former state property to private owners. One is therefore tempted solely to investigate the whole private sector together, because those enterprises included in the state’s privatization programmes tended to be submerged within the total number. The privatization of small enterprises gave the new owners the opportunity - on the basis of an existing, albeit incomplete and defective economic infrastructure - to participate in the dynamic business life which characterized, for instance, the service, hotel and catering branches of the economy. Thus privatization of the state sector must not be underestimated, even though at the same time there was a rapid growth in the new private sector. The privatization of the state sector was also characterized by the fact that non-Estonians in various ways were subjugated by legal restrictions, while everybody was more or less free to establish new private enterprises.
