E-Book Overview
In the 15 or so years after the end of the Cold War, vast economic changes rippled through the Warsaw Pact countries. Aslund chronicles the sometimes unsteady transition from centrally planned economies to market based approaches. Much had to be done. Privatisation was fundamentally different from what happened under that label in the existing capitalist countries. The latter always had strong private sectors. But in the countries surveyed here, privatisation in some cases meant selling off most of a country. Difficult issues of how to "spin off" housing, land and commercial real estate. The rise of the Russian oligarchs gets an entire chapter. Explaining how in the Russian rush to privatise, a few nimble men (and they were all men) managed to acquire vast assets from the state. For the most part, they were able to parlay these into huge conglomerates, and sidestep troublesome questions of fairness. Interesting comparisons are made to the robber barons of the US in the late 19th century. One key difference is that the oligarchs are proved unable to resist Putin's assertion of centralised rule. While in the US, the barons were able to largely hold off Washington for decades.
E-Book Content
P1: KNP 0521865265pre CUFX164/Aslund 978 0 521 86526 5 August 8, 2007 This page intentionally left blank vi 14:45 P1: KNP 0521865265pre CUFX164/Aslund 978 0 521 86526 5 August 8, 2007 14:45 HOW CAPITALISM WAS BUILT Anders Åslund is known for making bold predictions that initially arouse controversy but become common wisdom a few years later. He foresaw the collapse of the Soviet Union in his book Gorbachev’s Struggle for Economic Reform (1989). He depicted the success of Russia’s market transformation in How Russia Became a Market Economy (1995), when others saw little but chaos. After Russia’s financial crisis of 1998, Åslund insisted that Russia had no choice but to adjust to the world market (Building Capitalism, 2002), although most observers declared the market economic experiment a failure. r Why did Russia not choose Chinese gradual reforms? r Why are the former Soviet countries growing much faster than the Central European economies? r How did the oligarchs arise? r Where are the postcommunist countries heading? These are just some of the questions answered in his new book, How Capitalism Was Built, which tells the story of how all but three of twenty-one former communist countries were transformed into market economies from 1989 to 2007, but less than half of them became democracies. Anybody who wants to understand the often confusing dramas unfolding in the region and to obtain an early insight into the future will find this book useful and intellectually stimulating. Anders Åslund is a leading specialist on postcommunist economic transformation with more than 30 years of experience in the field. The author of seven books, he has also worked as an economic advisor to the Russian government, to the Ukrainian government, and to the president of the Kyrgyz Republic. Dr. Åslund joined the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C., in January 2006. Before that he was the Director of the Russian and Eurasian Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He teaches at Georgetown University. He was born in Sweden and served as a Swedish diplomat. He earned his PhD from Oxford University. i P1: KNP 0521865265pre CUFX164/Aslund 978 0 521 86526 5 August 8, 2007 14:45 Other books by Anders Åslund: Private Enterprise in Eastern Europe, 1985. Gorbachev’s Struggle for Economic Reform, 1989. Post-Communist Economic Revolutions: How Big a Bang? 1992. How Russia Became a Market Economy, 1995. Building Ca