This book has grown out of a collaboration fostered by the EC
Commission. In September 1990 ODI was asked to lead a European team of economists that would advise the EC Commission on its aid programme to Eastern Europe.

This book is divided into two parts. Part 1, provides an assessment of the lessons to be drawn by Eastern Europe from the structural adjustment experience of the Third World and of the potential impact on developing countries of the political and economic changes in Eastern Europe.

Part 2, provides brief country-by-country analyses of the origins of the revolutions, the progress of reform to date, and the principal economic and political obstacles that have to be grappled with in the short to medium term.