All the countries concerned have abandoned the traditional tools of communist economic control and moved more or less successfully toward free-market systems.A summary of the process containing both economic analysis and anecdotal case studies can be found in Charles Paul Lewis's How the East Was Won (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). Although some, such as Charles Paul Lewis, stress the beneficial effect of multinational investment, the reforms also had important negative consequences that are still unfolding. Average standards of living registered a catastrophic fall in the early 1990s in many parts of the former Comecon—most notably in the former Soviet Union—and began to rise again only toward the end of the decade. Some populations are still considerably worse off today than they were in 1989 (e.g. Moldova, and Serbia). Others have bounced back considerably beyond that threshold (e.g. the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland) and some such as Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania (Baltic Tiger), and Slovakia underwent an economic boom, although all have suffered from the 2009 recession, except for Poland, which was one of two countries (the other was Albania) in Europe maintained growth despite the worldwide recession.
All the countries concerned have abandoned the traditional tools of communist economic control and moved more or less successfully toward free-market systemsA summary of the process containing both economic analysis and anecdotal case studies can be found in Charles Paul Lewis's How the East Was Won (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). Although some, such as Charles Paul Lewis, stress the beneficial effect of multinational investment, the reforms also had important negative consequences that are still unfolding. Average standards of living registered a catastrophic fall in the early 1990s in many parts of the former Comecon—most notably in the former Soviet Union—and began to rise again only toward the end of the decade. Some populations are still considerably worse off today than they were in 1989 (e.g. Moldova, and Serbia). Others have bounced back considerably beyond that threshold (e.g the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland) and some such as Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania (Baltic Tiger), and Slovakia underwent an economic boom, although all have suffered from the 2009 recession, except for Poland, which was one of two countries (the other was Albania) in Europe maintained growth despite the worldwide recession.