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35.2 - Transitions - Transformations

Special Issue
HSR Vol. 35 (2010) No. 2: Special Issue: Transitions – Transformations

Heinrich Best, Katharina Bluhm, Michael Fritsch & Rainer K. Silbereisen (Eds.): Transitions - Transformations: Trajectories of Social, Economic and Political Change after Communism

Trajectories of Social, Economic and Political Change after Communism Anniversaries are normally somewhat arbitrary pretexts for putting important events and short-term developments into historical perspective. This was different with the 20th anniversary of the downfall of European communism and the transition of state socialism into market economies and representative democracies in 1989. The years 2008/2009 saw a crisis of international financial markets that shattered the system of a truly global capitalism established in the aftermath of 1989. Most of the contributions united in this Special Issue of Historical Social Research were presented and discussed at the 2009 Jena conference on Transitions – Transformations: Trajectories of Social, Economic and Political Change after Communism. The contributions 1) deal with a retrospective stock-taking of twenty years of social and economic transformation after the end of European communism and 2) take a look at the years of post-communist transformation as a prehistory of transition between stages in the development of global capitalism. The contributions focus on the impact of rapid social and institutional change on personality development and economic activities. This view into the psycho-social (Personality Development and Social Change) and economic (Varieties of Capitalism in Central Eastern Europe After EU Accession & Business Dynamics in the Transformation Process of Post-Socialist Societies) foundations of the great post-communist transformation is complemented by a look at the elites (Elites after Transition) involved in shaping and directing these developments.