ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with economic development as the result of discussions about the shortest or most appropriate way to modernity for each country or as an indicator of changes that were actually achieved. It is not our intention to rewrite the economic history of the region. Rather, we concentrate on the question as to how this development was influenced by external factors and how the respective economies tried to ‘catch up with and outpace’ the more developed countries under different political auspices. We focus on economic links with Western nations (the purchase of licences, trade in raw materials and products) as well as with the Soviet Union. One of the questions discussed in this chapter is whether the region profited from integration into international markets before 1938 and after the 1960s, or whether it is useful to employ the concept of the ‘development of under-development’, which is commonly applied to the economies of Latin America and its links to more developed countries. This approach might also allow us to assess the long-term economic and social impact of the Soviet experience. Furthermore, we discuss whether these questions are also valid for the two decades of post-communist transformation and whether this transformation can be interpreted as an already finished period or as something still in progress. From this point of view, post-communist transformation may be interpreted as an integral part of the long twentieth century.
