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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
On Christmas Day 1991, the Red Flag was hauled down from the Kremlin Tower. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ceased to exist. Gorbachev's attempted reform of state socialism, his policy of perestroika, had failed. There followed a transformation of all the former European socialist countries and those of the USSR. The major systemic changes subsequently advocated by the reformers were the removal of the dominant Communist Party and its replacement by democratic forms and a move to markets in place of centralised planning.
1 Zbigniew Brzezinski, for example, described it as a ‘state of general crisis, both ideologically and systematically. Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Failure. New York and London: Macmillan. 1989. p. 232. He pointed out that 5 countries were in ‘grave crisis' and another 6 in ‘crisis’; 4 (including China and East Germany) were not in crisis. p. 234.
2 As J. Kornai opines: ‘… [T]here is no alternative to the “capitalist system”.‘, From Socialism to Capitalism. London: The Social Market Foundation, 1998. pp. 2, 40). See also, B. Kaminski, The Collapse of State Socialism. Princeton University Press, 1991.
3 Klaus von Beyme, for example, emphasises that the state socialist societies were ‘a uniform socialist political system which was unique in European constitutional history'Klaus von Beyme, Transition to Democracy in Eastern Europe, New York: Macmillan 1996, p. 20.
4 See writers such as David Stark and L. Bruszt, Post Socialist Pathways. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998; and D. C. North, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
5 Human Development Report 2005. (Reference for 2005). In the following tables, the issues for 2001 (referring to the year 2000) and 2005 (referring to 2003) have been utilised. There is also a hard back publication. UNDP, Human Development Report 1991. Published by Oxford University Press, New York and London. 1991.
6 Collective farmers (peasants) are excluded from these figures. This is because they derived income from collective farms and individual plots. With the possible exception of Georgia, earnings in agriculture were very much less than in industry and services; and social and economic conditions were also very much inferior.
7 Census data from Soyuznye respubliki, Moscow: Goskomstat 1991, p.48. It is possible that the numbers of the native population in the republics may have been inflated in the census returns as this was a period of heightened national identification on a republican basis.
8 Nauchnye kadry SSSR, Moscow: Mysl' 1991, p.110.
9 Goskomstat SSSR, Soyuznye respubliki: osnovnye pokazateli. Moscow: goskomstata SSSR, 1991, pp.16-17.
10 I have standardised the number of countries to coincide with those included in the Human Development Report for 2003 (HDR 2005). I have added to the list eighteen new states (and excluded the USSR); the total number of states in the Report was 260 in 1990 and 277 in 2003.
11 In Turkmenistan, there was tacit support, the leadership reproduced whatever came from Moscow. In Uzbekistan, Karimov made a statement ignoring the removal of Gorbachev and called for the avoidance of ‘provocative actions’. Tajikistan again gave tacit support. Kyrgyzstan was the nearest to support for Gorbachev when President Akaev condemned the ‘unconstitutional coup’ but the local CP leadership supported it. I am indebted to Stephen White for drawing my attention to these facts derived from The Current Digest of the Soviet Press, 33/1991 pp. 25-26.
12 See: David Lipton and Jeffrey Sachs, ‘Creating a Market Economy in Eastern Europe: the Case of Poland’, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, vol 1, 1990. Extract in David Kennett and Marc Lieberman, The Road to Capitalism (Dryden Press, New York and London, 1992), pp. 350-4.
13 EBRD Transition Indicators 2006. Link.
14 The reform scores reflect the assessments of EBRD country economists For methodology, see: www.ebrd/com/country/econo/stats.
15 This index considers government consumption as a proportion of total consumption the ratio of transfers and subsidies to GDP, the number, composition and share of output by state-operated enterprises, government investment as a share of total investment, the use of price controls, the rates of top marginal tax thresholds, duration and use of military conscription, growth rate of money supply, level of inflation, access to foreign currency bank accounts, exchange rate controls, risk of property confiscation, risk of government cancelling contracts, revenue derived from taxes on international trade, variation on tariff rates, share of trade sector covered by non-tariff restrictions, size of the trade sector, percentage of bank deposits held in privately owned banks, share of total domestic credit allocated to the private sector, determination of interest rates by market forces, access to country's capital markets by foreign capital. Summarized from Appendix 2, Explanatory Notes and Data Sources. EBRD, Transition Report 1999 (EBRD: London 1999). p.24. In interpreting these data, one should note that in some countries, privately owned companies may still have considerable state ownership, especially in large-scale industry. For other indexes see also: Philip G. Roeder, ‘The Revolution of 1989: Post communism and the Social Sciences’, Slavic Review, 58, 4 (1999) 743-755.
16 2007 World Development Indicators, World Bank, Washington DC 2007., pp.277-278.
17 EBRD, Transition Report 2006. London: EBRD 2006. p.38.
18 Unctad, Handbook of Statistics, United Nations. Geneva, 2005. 162-179. This kind of data not given in 2008 handbook.
19 2007 World Development Indicators, pp.309-310. Turkmenistan data for 2000, World Bank, Development Data and Statistics. Accessed 3 Jan 2009.
20 Political rights include the right of adults to vote and compete for public office and for ‘elected representatives to have a decisive vote on public policies’. Civil liberties include the rights to ‘develop views, institutions and personal autonomy’ independently of the state. Freedom in the World 2007, Website. Rankings (on a 1-7 point scale) are shown on the Figure. Their definition of ‘Unfree’ I have classified as little or no political reform, these are essentially statist regimes, ‘partly free’ (which includes some pluralistic democratic rights and freedoms) is shown as partial political reform, and ‘free’ (defined as similar in character to Western liberal democratic regimes) is listed under great political reform.
21 Soyoung Kwon, for example, points out that the country preserves many of its previous features: a formal hegemonic singly Party, an official dominant ideology, a dominant state sector and public ownership. She notes that, unlike the European state socialist countries, the ruling elites have been closed for a long period and succession has followed a kin-based trajectory. See S. Kwon, Change and Continuity in North Korea, in David Lane, The Transformation of State Socialism. London and New York, 2007, chapter 14.
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