A New Capitalist Order: Privatization and Ideology in Russia and Eastern Europe

Extract

A New Capitalist Order: Privatization and Ideology in Russia and Eastern Europe. By Hilary Appel. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004. 248p. $27.95.

This book provides a valuable analysis of the role of ideology in the development of mass privatization programs in postcommunist countries. Mass privatization was a unique program that defined postcommunist economic transitions in the 1990s and was adopted in numerous countries. Launched first in the Czech Republic in 1991, this innovative method of privatization was adopted in many other postcommunist countries. The rationale for mass privatization was simple: Since people did not have the money to buy state-owned enterprises, the state could give them away. To distribute ownership widely throughout the formerly expropriated population, the state would distribute shares in state-owned enterprises to millions of small shareholders in exchange for free or nearly free vouchers. Mass privatization would divest the state of thousands of state enterprises, while creating a broad-based class of shareholders after decades of communism.