Uprooting Leninism, Cultivating Liberty

Since 1989 the states of East-Central Europe have worked at two staggering tasks - extirpating the political-economic institutions of Leninism and establishing the political-economic institutions of liberal capitalism. This book examines those tasks and suggests how the West can best assist the people who are carrying them out. The lead essay explains the underlying political forces that led up to 1989, demonstrates how far the region has come in establishing democratic regimes, analyses the looming political obstacles to the creation of a free society, and offers suggestions for overcoming these obstacles. The remaining essays look at the challenge of transforming socialist economics into market systems, focusing especially on the former republics of the USSR, and paying particular attention to the importance of encouraging new legal frameworks, new firms, and new entrepreneurs.