Poland

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Mon May 3 14:19:24 PDT 1999


At 04:15 PM 5/3/99 -0400, you wrote:
>So does the relative success of Poland and Hungary prove that shock
>therapy in some form can work? That the failure of Russia stemmed form
>purely Russian circumstances, not from the policies themselves?

Not at all! The so-called shock therapy is mostly talk. Most of the state-owned enterprises have not ben privatized od privatized only nominally (i.e. the state treasury being the only stock holder.)

Tha facts that matter are historical such as the level and type of industrialization, or urbanization. Another issue is foreign trade - much of the Central Europe decline during the "transition" resulted from the collapse of the Soviet market. Finding alternative markets (rather than "privatisation") is the key factor deciding between success and a failure.

As I understand it, countries depending more on agriculture have problems exporting their produce to EU due to protectionism, no?

Wojtek



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list