ABSTRACT
When Adam Michnik, Poland’s leading intellectual dissident of the Cold-War period, arranged in 1995 to reprint the rival visions of Václav Havel and Václav Klaus for his newspaper Wyborcza Gazeta, Warsaw’s leading journal, he was demonstrating his intense interest in the kind of political-economy that was emerging in the transition countries. 1 The velvet-revolutions were in the name of democracy and freedom, certainly not in the name of capitalism. Still, eight years later, the political transformation is assured, despite the return of Communist political figures to lead the administrations in all the major Central and East European countries, other than Russia and the Czech Republic. No country has reverted to the Soviet system, and most of the debate centers on the fortunes and perils of the market-system.
