A comprehensive introduction to the important economic, social and political processes and development issues in this increasingly popular area of study. Employing a groundbreaking thematic approach the book centres its discussion on the interrelation between contemporary development theories and continuing transition issues in this huge and complex region.

Since 1898, the former communist countries of Eastern Europe have gained international prominence. The continuing socio-economic transition and the instability evident in areas like the Caucasus and Former Yugoslavia have drawn the western world into uneasy interactions with the region. At the same time, closer commercial and cultural contacts are providing opportunities for rewarding relationships which have now resulted in many of these countries joining the EU. This book provides detailed coverage of the transition from communism to a market economy. Covering the whole range of East Central European and former Soviet Union countries, it charts the diversity within the region, offering in-depth coverage of specific areas as well as a broad view of development across the region. The book is organised into three comprehensive sections: the historical, socio-economic and environmental. The socio-economic section considers the critical issues of restructuring to effect the transition from central planning to a market economy, while the historical material provides an essential context for the constraints and opportunities affecting the region. The environmental section places emphasis on results of environmental neglect inherited from communism as well as looking to the future implications of EU directives on the problems of biodiversity and pollution in the region.

This volume examines the role of identity formation and stages of sequencing of the steps of reconciliation – which is an enduring rather than ad an ad hoc phenomenon. RIPAR 4 asks for both the challenges to it from the domestic and international systems and the actors involved, as well as for the role of »history,« »memory« and »remembrance« either as catalysts for or obstacles to reconciliation. The analyzing of the connection among the past, the present and the future in actual or prospective reconciliation embraces all these topics and questions.Influenced by the crisis in the former Sovjet Union following the March 2014 Russian annexation/integration of Crimea and the movement of Russian soldiers into Eastern Ukraine to aid Ukrainian separatists the essays in this volume were written in 2015. »Reconciliation« is a frequently ill-defined term. As an aspiration in this volume it encompasses three senses: an incipient, thin and minimal form amounting to passive, peaceful coexistence after enmity; a more elaborate, intermediate and engaged form that is captured by the term rapprochement; and a thick or fuller form denoting active friendship, empathy, trust, magnanimity and, ultimately, amity. Beyond the definitional goal, the volume addresses ten themes. Firstly, reconciliation is being questioned as a process and/ or a terminal condition. A view is made on the requirements for the transition from conflict to a reconciliatory process, and the obstacles to beginning a process of reconciliation. Its »soft« and »hard« expressions inter alia in emotional and political dimensions are also subject of the author's interest. The observations about conflict and cooperation offered in this volume wish to add significantly to the burgeoning literature of reconciliation. These essays demonstrate that we need a variety of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives to grapple with conflict and to promote reconciliation.

This volume makes JEC-commissioned expert studies of economic developments in East-Central Europe available to business people, educators and students. Coverage includes economic, political and social reform issues, regional relations, and the impact of Western assistance programmes.

Distributed to some depository libraries in microfiche.

This study analyzes the main requirements placed on Central and Eastern Europe's financial systems during their transition to a market economy. It assesses the financial reforms already carried out in the countries of Central Europe, their adaptations of Western institutional models, and the lessons to be drawn from their experiences for the "second wave" reformers in the former Soviet Union and the Balkans.

Green activism played a critical role in the downfall of Soviet-style communism in Eastern Europe at the end of the 1980s. After the revolutions, environmentalists were expected to exert influence within the new democracies and to form the bedrock of the new civil societies that were predicted to flourish across the region; the prospect of EU membership provided activist networks with even greater optimism about their political opportunities. Two decades later what has been the impact of political and economic liberalisation on environmental campaigners and policy advocates? Has access to elites increased with democratisation and Europeanization? To what extent does the realm of environmental politics, within individual states and across the region, continue to represent an optic on change and continuity? Through country case-studies and comparative analysis of national movements, this edited volume addresses each of these questions and provides a different perspective of green politics in the region. This book was previously published as a special issue of Environmental Politics.

Land reform is a key factor in determining the political, economic and social future of the transitional states of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. This book represents the first major study in this area. Utilizing extensive field work, unpublished materials, statistical data and interviews with land reform officials, the contributors explore the key issues.

Contains texts of constitutions of various countries which were once part of the U.S.S.R.

Two decades have now passed since the revolutions of 1989 swept through Eastern Europe and precipitated the collapse of state socialism across the region, engendering a period of massive social, economic and political transformation. This book explores the ways in which young people growing up in post-socialist Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union negotiate a range of identities and transitions in their personal lives against a backdrop of thoroughgoing transformation in their societies. Drawing upon original empirical research in a range of countries, the book's contributors explore the various freedoms and insecurities that have accompanied neo-liberal transformation in post-socialist countries - in spheres as diverse as consumption, migration, political participation, volunteering, employment and family formation - and examine the ways in which they have begun to re-shape different aspects of young people's lives. In addition, while 'social change' is a central theme of the issue, all of the chapters in the collection indicate that the new opportunities and risks faced by young people continue both to underpin and to be shaped by familiar social and spatial divisions, not only within and between the countries addressed, but also between 'East' and 'West'. This book was originally published as a special issue of Journal of Youth Studies.