The Great Transition of Central-Eastern Europe: Successes and Disappointments

Kornai, Janos

The lecture covers a group of countries consisting of eight former socialist states, including Hungary. When the European Union accepted them in 2004 as its new members, it tacitly acknowledged that they had developed real democracies and market economies over the course of fifteen years. But what did this great transition involve? The lecture attempts to answer this question from two different perspectives. One of the approaches explores how the transition may be evaluated from the angle of the history of the world. The Central-Eastern European transition is compared with great transitions of other historical eras and other regions in the past, analysing their economic and political nature, their extent, their aggressiveness, their pace, and their historical circumstances. The other approach tries to weigh results and losses brought about by the transition in the lives of people today. Analysing the viewpoint of the man in the street, we can conclude that the transition process was overburdened with exaggerated expectations.

About the lecturer