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The Socialist Experiment and Beyond: The Economic Development of Eastern Europe

Dennison, Tracy and Klein, Alexander (2021) The Socialist Experiment and Beyond: The Economic Development of Eastern Europe. In: Broadberry, Stephen and Fukao, Kyoji, eds. The Cambridge Economic History of the Modern World Volume 2: 1870 to the Present. The Cambridge Economic History of the Modern World . Cambridge University Press, pp. 74-99. E-ISBN 978-1-316-67160-3. (doi:10.1017/9781316671603.004) (KAR id:83941)

Abstract

Using recent advances in historical national accounts and scholarship of the region, this chapter depicts the economic development of eastern Europe from the times of the Habsburg monarchy and the Russian Empire before World War I through the turbulent interwar years, with the onset of the communist regime and socialist experiment in Russia, the spread of the centrally planned economic system and communist rule in the post-World War II decades, its collapse in the late 1980s and then a decade of transition to market economies. The chapter assesses the region’s economic performance in each of these periods. Even though the path of eastern Europe since the late nineteenth century has been one marked by a series of significant shocks, there were also significant continuities, so that the socialist ‘experiment’ did not result in the significant break with the past that its architects had envisaged.

Item Type: Book section
DOI/Identification number: 10.1017/9781316671603.004
Uncontrolled keywords: Central planning, Socialist experiment, transition, economic growth, communist regime, nationalization
Subjects: H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Human and Social Sciences > School of Economics
Depositing User: Alexander Klein
Date Deposited: 05 Nov 2020 17:17 UTC
Last Modified: 08 Mar 2022 16:23 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/83941 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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