Greskovits, Béla2025-03-252025-03-2520020101-315710.1590/0101-31572002-1270https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14018/26739What is attempted in the East is catching up with the West from a recent position of worse-than-Latin-American economic backwardness. Until now, populations that were sentenced to political patience by the logic of poor democracies have reluctantly backed this enormous effort. Central and Eastern Europe’s post-socialist path is characterized by an increasingly discredited ideology of a return to Europe and a non- European combination of substitute institutions of development: radical opening towards the world economy, damaged institutions of labor representation, eroded state capacity, and often strong private and foreign dominance in the financial and other strategic sectors. There is a chance for a few countries to succeed. Yet various development traps may be more likely in the end than a “Great Spurt” in the Gerschenkronian sense.enginfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccessJournal articlehttps://m2.mtmt.hu/api/publication/2708974Greskovits, B 2002, 'The Postsocialist Transformation in Central and Eastern Europe', REVISTA DE ECONOMIA POLITICA/BRAZILIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, vol. 22, no. 4, pp. 15-30. https://doi.org/10.1590/0101-31572002-1270RIS: urn:0BA20518EE86A65E08D129D6A1C9BC42RIS: 270897416176402