Transformation

Transformation

Introduction


As a consequence of the Russian Revolution in 1917, the Soviet Union was created and there was a revolution across Europe. Most of the Communist states in Europe particularly the East, were established in the aftermath of the Second World War and by the early 1980s, communist governments ruled a vast number of the world's population, Tangiev 2007. Nonetheless, as a result of internal challenges economically, foreign entanglements, and demands for change, the Soviet Union itself was ever more unstable. In the late 1980s, Eastern Europe grew increasingly unstable as people demanded for a revolution and in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed. The founders of the communist ideology envisaged communism as the ultimate evolutionary stage of society at which time the state would have faded away. Workers were to rise up to tear down capitalism and replace it with socialism, a transitional period during which the state is to gain control over all means of production on behalf of the proletariat (waged people), which sequentially creates a classless society in which absolute collective ownership has been attained and the state no longer plays a role, Brus 1988.


Communist governments have historically been characterized by state ownership of productive resources in a planned economy and sweeping campaigns of economic restructuring such as nationalization of industry, land reform and they promote collective ownership of the means of production and distribution as a result of this it is correct to say communist countries of Eastern and Central Europe had similar characteristics. Russia and Belarus have a common history under the Soviet Union characterized by a non- existent stock market, imbalanced labour market, legal constraint for private businesses and are now at various stages of transformation as well as different methods of transformation strategy such as the shock therapy employed by Russia and the strategy employed by Belarus from...