Contrasting Responses to the International Economic Crisis of 2008–10 in the Eleven CIS Countries and in the Ten Post-Communist EU Member Countries

This article developed out of a presentation which I gave to the US Department of State in June 2009, when I was invited to Washington DC to advise the US government on the likely impact of the Western financial crisis of 2008-09 on Europe’s post-Communist states. The articles argues that the nature and magnitude of the effects of the international economic crisis on the eleven Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries and on the ten post-communist states admitted into the EU in 2004 or 2007 differed quite widely and are not amenable to broad generalizations. Not surprisingly, therefore, the responses of these states to the crisis have also differed even more widely, as have the longer-term consequences. It is argued that it is not necessary to invoke or fall back on highly questionable allegations of ‘essential’ cultural differences to explain these widely differing impacts, responses and consequences. They can be satisfactorily explained and conceptualized in terms of relatively concrete and tangible differences in the structures of power, resources, opportunities, incentives and constraints that have emerged in these two broad groupings of countries. Above all, the nature, structure and orientations of the economic systems that have emerged in most of the CIS countries have diverged quite substantially from those of the post-communist states that joined the EU. It is also argued that the profound structural, situational and systemic divergences between the economies of the eleven CIS countries and those of the ten post-communist states admitted into the EU in 2004 or 2007 are very likely to continue to complicate and frustrate attempts to integrate or associate CIS countries more closely with the EU for the foreseeable future