FROM THE ARCHIVES: 1991 EDITION.

30

YEARS AGO

FEBRUARY 1991

As Hungarian economist Janos Kornai and Polish economist Jan Winiecki argue, the nations of Eastern Europe need flesh and blood entrepreneurs more than anything else. Their point is simple: You can't have capitalism without capitalists. The countries of Eastern Europe must cultivate true capitalists--both domestic and foreign--on their own, through a functioning convertible currency, viable legal accounting systems, modest levels of taxation and regulation, and full, constitutionally-guaranteed property rights.

The World Bank's record throughout the developing world and in Eastern Europe demonstrates that it cannot be a catalyst for radical economic liberalization. Following in its path, the new East European Development Bank is fundamentally a socialist undertaking....With the verdict on socialism so clear, the United States and other Western governments should abandon the oxymoronic idea of planning for capitalism.

MELANIES. TAMMEN

Planning for Capitalism

MARCH 1991

Last year Hungarians were transfixed by drawn-out battles in the press over the dismantling of dictatorship. Even the new wave of porn publishers dignified their trade with titles like 'Independent and Democratic Sexy Magazine.' This year the buzzword is privatization. The coded language of post-Stalinist socialism is being replaced by a trendy vocabulary of commerce, although words like profit and investment still sound risque to the Hungarian ear.

STEVEN CARLSON

Managing the Managers

JUNE 1991

Sinyavsky is right to say that, just as a pyramid cannot be 'restructured' into a Greek temple, the Soviet system cannot be restructured into a democracy; it can only crumble and clear the space for a new society to be built. Perhaps the massive blocks of stone were held in place by beams of rotting wood. It is only to be hoped that, in collapsing, they do not crush too many victims under their dead weight....

Now that the first and last stronghold of communism appears to be falling apart, there are still those who maintain that it didn't work because it was never tried properly. But what other way is there to judge a political ideology except by what happened when people set out to build a society on its principles?

CATHY YOUNG

...And Its Discontents

JULY 1991

What's the first thing a people freed from oppression do? Build a casino. In the last couple of years, casinos have opened throughout the former Eastern Bloc from Yugoslavia to Hungary...