The Role of Informal Economies in the Post-Soviet World

2    Re-visiting the recurring question of transition

Everything the Communists told us about communism was a complete and utter lie. Unfortunately, everything the Communists told us about capitalism turned out to be true.

A popular joke in Moscow during the early 1990s, as recounted by John Nelis,

then of the World Bank

Introduction: the durability of transition theory

All forms of economic reform led by global institutions are, at their heart, aimed at marketisation. The creation, or realigning, of economies towards the market has been the cornerstone of meta-global policy from Latin America in the early 1980s, to Eastern Europe later in the decade, in the post-Soviet states during the 1990s and to the responses to Europe’s financial crisis ...