Innovation and Productivity in Eastern Europe: An International Comparison

1991 ◽  
Vol 138 ◽  
pp. 75-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
George F. Ray
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
International Comparison ◽  
Innovative Activity ◽  
The West ◽  
Technological Level

The aim of the study was to approach an assessment of the technological level of the economies in Eastern Europe, particularly in the newly-democratising countries—Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland—by means of studying their innovative activity and productivity levels in comparison with the West.

Europe's Growth Champion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcin Piatkowski
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
High Income ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
The West ◽  
Success Stories ◽  
Catch Up ◽  
Inclusive Society ◽  
First Time ◽  
Global Growth

The book is about one of the biggest economic success stories that one has hardly ever heard about. It is about a perennially backward, poor, and peripheral country, which over the last twenty-five years has unexpectedly become Europe’s and a global growth champion and joined the ranks of high-income countries during the life of just one generation. It is about the lessons learned from its remarkable experience for other countries in the world, the conditions that keep countries poor, and challenges that countries need face to grow and become high-income. It is also about a new growth model that this country—Poland—and its peers in Central and Eastern Europe and elsewhere need to adopt to continue to grow and catch up with the West for the first time ever. The book emphasizes the importance of the fundamental sources of growth—institutions, culture, ideas, and leaders—in economic development. It argues that a shift from an extractive society, where the few rule for the benefit of the few, to an inclusive society, where many rule for the benefit of many, was the key to Poland’s success. It asserts that a newly emerged inclusive society will support further convergence of Poland and Central and Eastern Europe with the West and help sustain the region’s Golden Age, but moving to the core of the European economy will require further reforms and changes in Poland’s developmental DNA.

scholarly journals Made in Yugoslavia: Studies in Popular Music

2021 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 271-282
Author(s):  
Laura Emmery
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
New Wave ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
History Of ◽  
Comprehensive Discussion ◽  
Made In

Made in Yugoslavia: Studies in Popular Music (edited by Danijela Špirić Beard and Ljerka Rasmussen) is a fascinating study of how popular music developed in post-World War II Yugoslavia, eventually reaching both unsurpassable popularity in the Balkans and Eastern Europe, and critical acclaim in the West. Through the comprehensive discussion of all popular music trends in Yugoslavia − commercial pop (zabavna-pop), rock, punk, new wave, disco, folk (narodna), and neofolk (novokomponovana) − across all six socialist Yugoslav republics, the reader is given the engrossing socio-cultural and political history of the country, providing the audience with a much-needed and riveting context for understanding the formation and the eventual demise of Tito’s Yugoslavia.

scholarly journals In the Line of Fire: The Soviet Crackdown of Hungary, 1956-58

1999 ◽  
pp. 56
Author(s):  
Johanna Granville
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
The West ◽  
Suez Crisis ◽  
The Soviet Union

About forty years ago, the first major anti-Soviet uprising in Eastern Europe-the 1956 Hungarian revolt-took place. Western observers have long held an image of the Soviet Union as a crafty monolith that expertly, in the realpolitik tradition, intervened while the West was distracted by the Suez crisis. People also believed that Soviet repressive organs worked together efficiently to crack down on the Hungarian "counterrevolutionaries. " Newly released documents from five of Moscow's most important archives, including notes ofkey meetings of the presidium of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) taken by Vladimir Mal in, reveal that the Soviet Union in fact had difficulty working with its Hungarian allies.

scholarly journals Role of Creative Industries in the Post-Socialist Urban Transformation

2014 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 19-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tadeusz Stryjakiewicz ◽  
Michał Męczyński ◽  
Krzysztof Stachowiak
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Creative Industries ◽  
Urban Transformation ◽  
The West ◽  
Local Networks ◽  
The Past ◽  
Path Dependent ◽  
Basic Features

Abstract Over the past two decades the cities in Central and Eastern Europe have witnessed a wide-ranging transformation in many aspects. The introduction of a market-oriented economy after half a century of socialism has brought about deep social, economic, cultural and political changes. The first stage of the changes, the 1990s, involved the patching up of structural holes left by the previous system. The post-socialist city had to face challenges of the future while carrying the ballast of the past. Rapid progress in catching up with the West transformed the city a great deal. Later on, the advent of the 21st century brought a new wave of development processes based, among other things, on creativity and innovation. Hence our contribution aims to explore the role of creativity and creative industries in the post-socialist urban transformation. The article consists of three basic parts. In the first we present the concept of a ‘creative post-socialist city’ and define the position of creative industries in it. We also indicate some similarities to and differences from the West European approaches to this issue. In the second part, examples from Central and Eastern Europe are used in an attempt to elucidate the concept of a ‘creative post-socialist city’ by identifying some basic features of creative actions /processes as well as a creative environment, both exogenous and endogenous. The former is embedded in different local networks, both formal (institutionalised) and informal, whereas the structure of the latter is strongly path-dependent. In the third part we critically discuss the role of local policies on the development of creative industries, pointing out some of their shortcomings and drawing up recommendations for future policy measures.

After the Wall II: The Fall and Rise of an Educational System

2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
John G. Rodden
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Family Member ◽  
Educational System ◽  
Maximum Speed ◽  
The West ◽  
System P ◽  
Self Actualization ◽  
Journey To The West ◽  
The 1960S

In the fall of 1990, a hit movie comedy opened to packed houses in eastern German theaters. Go, Trabi, Go!—the producers gave the film an English title—celebrated with rollicking Weltschmerz the misadventures of Georg, a hapless baby-blue Trabant 601—whose jinxed capers make him the undeniable screen successor to Herbie, the Disney VW Beetle of the 1960s. Georg stalls pitifully on the Autobahn, is shorn of his bumper in Munich traffic, is robbed of all four tires by pranksters during a camping stop, and even gets mistaken for scrap near an auto junkyard, an obvious metaphor for the DDR running out of gas—as it lurches toward unity. Go, Trabi, Go! begins with DDR German teacher Udo Struutz deciding to fulfill a long-deferred dream: his first journey to the West will be to travel from his hellhole hometown of industrial Bitterfield, the dirtiest city in all of Eastern Europe, to balmy Naples, thereby tracing the footsteps of his beloved Goethe, whose Italian Journey recorded his own (less quixotic) southern pilgrimage from Weimar in the 1780s. Herr Struutz packs his wife and daughter into little Georg, a family member for 20 years whom Herr Struutz lovingly wipes down with his own washcloth. “See Naples and Die!” scrawls Herr Struutz on Georg’s trunk, recalling Goethe’s clarion call to self-actualization: “Sterbe und werde!” (“die and become!”). The adventure turns out to be a story of Innocent Ossis Abroad and their psychological collision with the West. Numerous scenes in Go, Trabi, Go! allude to the region’s plight: putt-putting along on the Autobahn, little Georg strains to do his maximum speed of 60 mph as contemptuous Mercedes-Benzes, Porsches, and BMWs fly by; broken-down in Bavaria, Georg costs the Struutz family a steep (an outrageously inflated) price for repair, which the intrepid socialist entrepreneurs earn by charging curious Bavarians DM 5 for a “Trabi Peep Show” and a five-minute joy ride in Georg. Reassuringly, the Struutz family eventually does reach its destination, albeit with the accident-prone but indomitable Georg—now minus his top—as a breezy convertible.

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