A Study of the Market Reforms in Post-Communist Eastern Europe

Did Gorbachev implement Glasnost with the aim of turning the Soviet Union into a democratic capitalist economy?

The Market Revolution can be described as an early manifestation of capitalism, an era associated with a new sense of individual rights, equality, and freedom. The Market Revolution took place in the early 19th century, and it drastically changed not only the market and commerce of Americans but their personal lives as well. Before the Market Revolution America hadn’t seen any new life changing innovations, most of their goods, such as clothing and farming tools, were still being made from home, and trade was limited by poor roads and little means of transportation. In addition, the poor road system meant that there was little interaction and movement between each state. It wasn’t till the creation of new ways of communicating, steamboats, and the building of canals, railroads, and turnpikes that prompted American expansion. As a result, the United States began to see a movement of settlements westward and the rise cities. The Embargo of 1807 and the War of 1812, led to the cutoff of British imports and the need to establish the first large –scale factories; the rise of factories then led to new employment and a boom in domestic manufacturing (Foner 331). The changes led by the advances in the society of the Market Revolution evidently gave women the opportunity to gain a level of equality in both domestic and work environments, it also gave Americans the

The industrial expansion of the Soviet Union resulted in one of the greatest economic growths for a single country that the modern world has ever seen. This economic growth ultimately led to the USSR becoming one of the world’s only two superpowers in the post-WWII era. Much of the country’s economic growth occurred because of the USSR’s use of a command economy, which is “an economy in which production, investment, prices, and incomes are determined centrally by a government” [1]. Using a command economy, the USSR was able to force industrialization in certain sectors in which pre-Soviet Russia highly struggled. One of these sectors was the Nuclear Power sector. Ultimately, Soviet successes in the nuclear power industry were highly evident

A description of the eighteen hundreds in one word would be amend. The trial and era years were in full swing and many people had thoughts about what was right and what was wrong. People had learned from past events such as the American revolution and America was growing into a powerful self-ruling nation. The market revolution brought upon the reform impulse which was impactful to events such as the abolishment of slavery and women’s rights.

During the late 1700’s, the United States was no longer a possession of Britain, instead it was a market for industrial goods and the world’s major source for tobacco, cotton, and other agricultural products. A labor revolution started to occur in the United States throughout the early 1800’s. There was a shift from an agricultural economy to an industrial market system. After the War of 1812, the domestic marketplace changed due to the strong pressure of social and economic forces. Major innovations in transportation allowed the movement of information, people, and merchandise. Textile mills and factories became an important base for jobs, especially for women. There was also widespread

Communism is a system of social organisation which formerly consumed almost a third of countries in the entire world, having originated in Russia. The first official communist state was founded during the Russian revolutions in 1917, due to the inaugural communist political party ‘Bolsheviks’ gaining primal power. Afterwards, the influence of communism spread to other countries with the likes of Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and East Germany to name a few. These countries that were governed on communist principles were known as the ‘Eastern Bloc’. Even countries in Asia were persuaded into the theoretically human equality system such as China, Laos and Vietnam. Communism was gathering strength to strength every year in the mid 20th century, but eventually its impact was wiped off in the late 20th century when the Berlin War was knocked down in 1989, ending the barrier between the Eastern and Western blocs. Communism arguably was the most influential social experiment in history, but also the most flawed and its failure to change the world permanently will always remain significant in history.

What were some of the elements of market revolution? The market revolution took place in the United States and got carried out by both the federal government and the states government. How much did the government spend on infrastructure? Between 1787 and 1860, the foundations of the states got improved as the burden for building infrastructure fell on the federal government and it spent 6o million dollars regarding building roads and canals as well as improving harbors. On the other hand, the state government paid ten times the cash that the federal government spent on the same. What did the completion of canals bring? The end of channels especially the Erie Canal resulted in a scramble among other states with an aim of matching New York’s

During the rule of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1989, many great and many terrible events occurred that are important and vital to our knowledge of history. The purpose of learning history is so that we as people are well-educated on different governments and ideologies and so that we, in this day and age, can do our very best to not repeat past mistakes. The USSR, while they developed culturally as a country, destroyed millions of lives all across Western Europe with their communist approach to rule and their blinded goal of total power. The history books today give a good insight into how terrible the Soviet Union really was, but these textbooks are written as objectively as possible. The future history textbooks should shed a negative light on all of the wrongdoings of the Soviet Union so that students understand that what happened this century was horrific and should never occur again.

The many long-term internal causes of the collapse of the Soviet Union centralized around weaknesses in their economy. They had an inflexible central planning system, the inability to modernize, and the inefficiency in their agriculture production. Sometime around the 1970's the computer and automation revolution had emerged. This revolution took over the West, but practically missed the Soviet Union, except in the military sector (Baylis & Smith, 2001.) Gorbachev's goal in economic restructuring was to create a separation between the economic and the political. The major changes began with the legalization of private farming and business co-operatives, and the allowing of foreign company ownership over Soviet enterprises (Baylis &Smith, 2001) All of Gorbachev's ideas on economic restructuring backfired on him since the price levels were inconsistent, and a sense of social confusion about the future of their state was created.

Comparing Lenin and Stalin one finds that both were following a communist ideal but what is the communist ideal? The main principal is to share a country's wealth amongst its people. This is the theoretical side of the communist idea; the practical side requires a careful planning of the country's economy and also a system that makes sure that everybody is treated equally.

relations with the West in the form of the Marshall plan nor the lack of

#1. In the late 1980s, Soviet Union had brought its glasnost (openness) era. Soviet president Mikhail G. introduced the revolutionary idea of Perestroika, which refers to “economic restructuring.” Gradually, Soviet’s culture and business began to grow. The political parties began to spring up, and farmers began to sell their products on the open market. In 1987, the Kremlin passed a new law on the joint ventures, easing restrictions on the importation of foreign capital, technology, and expertise.

There were many negative aspects of the Soviet command economy. The weaknesses of the Soviet command economy involved several things such as inefficiency, bureaucracies, surpluses, shortages and having not many choices and very little freedom. Supporting the above statement is agriculture didn’t provide extra funds to help finance industrialization. Factory owners were forced to make products that there was not a demand for. Huge resources were given were given to a bureaucracy and nonproductive military and security services.

Many political beliefs exist. Everyone has the right to chose what to believe in, what ideas to have, what to seek and how to achieve his goals. Political science is not very defined and strict. Specific rules saying that if one believes in a certain idea he should join a certain party do not exist. Certain things match certain group of people and other things this group of people would not accept. The same principle can be applied for countries. Communism appears to be successful for China, but it failed for Eastern European countries. It is very important the proper way of government to be found and used by the government of a country. The failure of the government can lead to failure in

The path of the former Eastern Bloc countries from state-controlled to free market economic organization has been a topic of research for many scholars across disciplines. Recently, decelerating gains of these countries’ economies (Roaf, Atoyan, Joshi, & Krogulski, 2014) have further increased interest in the region. Especially salient is the question of the channels of persistence of the ‘communist institutions’ that affect those economies to these days. However, isolating specific channels, such as legal institutions or value differences, is difficult in these countries due to endogeneity considerations and data limitations. In this paper, I intend to propose a research design that will provide a framework for identifying