These essays help to put the mass of changes in the former USSR and the eastern bloc into a larger historical and sociological perspective.

The writers consider the social complexity which surrounds any political and economic system -- an "embeddedness," which establishes itself very slowly and over many years. Inspired by the "great transformation" model Karl Polanyi substantiated, they analyse the changes as long evolutionary processes.

Seen in this light, it is easier to understand why the surgical implants of the free market into eastern bloc and former Soviet countries have not been accepted without turbulent rejection.

Contributors include: John Campbell, Mihailo Crnobrnja, Agnes Czako & Endre Sik, Jerzy Hausner, Bob Jessop, Tadeusz Kowalik, Domenico Mario Nuti, Birgit Muller, Yakov M. Rabkin, Hilary Wainwright, and Claire Wallace.

Table of Contents:
PART I: Laissez Faire is Planned.
Hilary Wainwright (Centre for International Labour Studies at Manchester Univ.): Civic Movements and the Politics of Knowledge
Jerzy Hausner is Professor of Economics at the Cracow Academy of Economics and Chief Advisor to the Polish Deputy Minister and Minister of Finance. His article, Contradictions and Dilemmas in the Development of Post Socialist Societies , addresses the need for integrating strong interest groups in a strategy for long-term economic restructuring.
Domenico Mario Nuti is Professor of Economics at the London Business School in the UK. In his article, The Restoration of Markets in Central Eastern Europe , he discusses the current restoration of markets from a historical and theoretical perspective and examines the feasibility of market socialism.

PART II: Agency in the Transformation Process
Tadeusz Kowalik is Professor of Economics at the Institute of History and Science, Education and Technology at the Polish Academy of Sciences. His article, From 'Self-Governing Republic' to Capitalism (Polish Workers and Intellectuals), questions theories of sudden change and suggests that, in Poland, more profound social and political change is yet to come.
Yakov Rabkin is Professor of History at the Universit‚ de Montr‚al. His article, Science, Scientists and the End of the Soviet Union, examines the role of the scientific intelligentsia in the demise of communism in the Soviet Union, and their future role in Russia.
Mihailo Crnobrnja has held various academic and political positions in the former Yugoslavia, including Ambassador to the European Community. His article, Intelligentsia and Nationalism in the Yugoslav Drama , examines the ambiguous relationship between intellectual elites and nationalism in the former Yugoslavia.

PART III. The dynamics and Effects of the Neoliberal Plan
Klaus Nielsen discusses possible redirections of current economic transformation in his article, Institutional Dynamics in Post-Socialism: Choice and Redirection of Strategy.
John Campbell is Associate Professor of Sociology at Harvard University in the USA. In Transformations of Post-Communist Fiscal Systems , he analyses the on-going transformations of the fiscal systems of the former communist states in Eastern Europe, in the light of the fact that well-developed fiscal institutions do not yet exist in these countries.
Bob Jessop is Professor of Sociology at the University of Lancaster in the UK. His article discusses... Regional Economic Development and Strategies in Post-Socialist Societies: Contexts, Constraints, and Conjectures.

PART IV. The Protective Counter Movement
Agnes Czako is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Budapest University of Economics in Hungary; Endre Sik is Professor in the Department of Human Resources at the same university. In their article they comment... On the Role of the Network as a Resource in Economic Transactions in Post-Communism.
Birgit Muller is Professor at the Institute of Ethnology at the University of Berlin in Germany. Her article, East-West German Stereotypes and the Problems of Transition in Three Enterprises in East Berlin provides an analysis of network capital and the effects on it of stereotypical images of the East German worker.
Claire Walker is Professor of Sociology at the Central European University in Prague, Czechoslovakia. She discusses the forms of social protection needed to allow new economic structures in eastern Europe to remain efficient, and political climates to remain stable.