Preface
When I had progressed quite far in writing my book, Planning and Market in Soviet and East European Thought (1993), the socialist system in Poland, the former Czechoslovakia and Hungary, the countries which are discussed in my book, went out of existence.
At that time I decided that research into the causes of the collapse in the three countries mentioned would be my next research project. My previous book is in a sense a sequel to my book on economic reforms (1989), and this new book which I am presenting to the reader is a sequel to the two mentioned books.The rise of a socialist system in the former USSR and Eastern Europe and its collapse are two of the greatest historic events of the twentieth century. No doubt these events will be a frequent topic for many historians for a long time to come, all the more because socialist ideas are not going to vanish; many of the conditions which have brought them into being are still with us. This book is intended to be a modest contribution to an examination of the causes of the collapse.
Evaluations of political and economic events of historic importance can be more successful if they are performed a long time after the events. This usually gives access to more sources about the circumstances which led to the events. In addition, with the passage of time, the emotions generated by such events settle down and it is possible to view the events more objectively. This is especially true of such a hot topic as this book is dealing with, where propaganda makes it difficult to see many of the circumstances connected with the collapse in the right perspective. On the other hand, a book written after a step back in time, in this case five years, has the advantage of being able to catch the atmosphere in which the event occurred.
I have selected the three countries studied for my research for several reasons.
Perhaps the most important was that all my books discuss these three countries and therefore I know them best of all the former CMEA countries. What was perhaps no less important was the fact that two of the countries, Poland and Hungary, were the first two to abandon the socialist system. True, I also include the USSR in most of my books, but this time I have decided to confine myself to one chapter, which is needed anyhow due to the role of the Soviet Union in the so-called socialist camp. It seemed to me that it would be too big a‘bite’ to want to include the USSR. In addition, when I started to work on this book it was not clear what would happen to the USSR.
Considering that the socialist system was an economic, political and social system, it is clear that an examination of the causes of its collapse cannot be confined to economic analysis: to get a complete picture of the forces which brought down the system an analysis of the political and social factors is also needed. Therefore, though my book is predominantly an economic examination, I devote some attention to political and social factors.
I have given much thought to the structure of my book. In my other books, which are also comparative in nature, certain chapters discuss common and contrasting features of the aspects examined in the countries covered by the research and are followed by country studies chapters. This time I have opted for a different method. With the exception of Chapter 8, where I first discuss common features of economic development and then treat separately development in individual countries, in all the other chapters there is no such strict separation since I felt the problems discussed did not require it.
In this book I first discuss the unreformed economic mechanism and then the reformed. I do this partly because I do not share the view of some economists who believe that socialism in whatever form, the traditional or the reformed, had no chance for survival and who therefore have a tendency to deal with it as a non-restructured phenomenon. In my opinion, to put it with some simplification, the reformed socialist system did have a chance, provided it had had more time for experimentation.
The book is divided into three parts besides the Conclusions. Part I, which consists of only one chapter, can be regarded in a sense as an introduction. It gives a short survey of views about the causes of the collapse of socialism: on the one hand, these are views which predicted the collapse of socialism on the basis of a certain theory before the real collapse came about, and on the other hand, views expressed after the event happened.
Part II contains five chapters dealing with the unreformed economic mechanism which I mostly call the traditional system. For space-saving reasons and for readers’ convenience, this principle is not applied consistently. In Chapter 2, which is the first chapter of Part II, the traditional system is briefly described. True, most of the readers of comparative economic systems are familiar with its principles, but there are many who do not have a definite knowledge. Chapters 3 and 4 examine problems to which the economic literature has devoted little attention. Chapter 3 discusses economic and social policy, primarily
during the traditional system. As will be shown in this chapter, systemic and economic policy aspects should not be mixed up, though a very thin line separates them. In Chapter 4 labour-management relations are discussed. Here, as well as in Chapter 5, which discusses external economic relations, changes arising during economic reforms are also examined. The last chapter of Part II is devoted to the political and ideological factors of the collapse.
Part III contains four chapters. Chapter 7 deals with economic reforms in the 1960s and the 1980s and the views which held that the economic reforms brought down the socialist system. Chapter 8 gives a short survey of economic development and its effect on the standard of living, primarily from the second half of the 1970s, when, in all the countries under review, the economies took a turn for the worse. In Chapter 9 I examine the development of ownership relations since the seizure of political power.
In the last chapter I discuss the role of the Soviet Union in the collapse of the socialist system in Poland and Hungary. As is known, the latter two countries, which headed the movement away from socialism, could only achieve their goal because the Soviets no longer stuck to Brezhnev’s doctrine. The last chapter does not confine itself to the examination of the relationship between the Soviet Union and the countries under review here and its impact on the collapse of the socialist system in the smaller countries. To understand why the Soviet Union did not try to prevent Poland and Hungary from rejecting the socialist system it is important to be familiar with the situation in the USSR in the second half of the 1980s. Chapter 10 describes that situation.Some definitions of terms used in this book are required. Before the socialist system collapsed the term ‘socialist economic system’ on the one hand, and the terms ‘economic mechanism’ or ‘system of management of the economy’ on the other hand were usually regarded as different terms. The two latter terms meant methods used for the operation of the socialist economic system. They included planning, regulation system and organisational system. The ‘socialist economic system’ was regarded as a broader term which also included ownership relations. I will use the terms in the book as described here.
The Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia no longer exist as state structures. When these terms are used it is understood that I refer to former state structures. The three countries under review as a group are often called ‘smaller countries’ or ‘small countries’ in this book.