Collision and Collusion: Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe

When the Soviet Union's communist empire collapsed in 1989, a mood of euphoria took hold in the West and in Eastern Europe. The West had won the ultimate victory it had driven a silver stake through the heart of communism and buried it at last. Its next planned step was to help the nations of Eastern Europe to reconstruct themselves as democratic, free market states, full partners in the First World Order. But that, as Janine Wedel reveals in this volume, was before Western governments set their raft of poorly conceived programmes in motion. This text tells the story of Western governments' attempts to aid the former Soviet block. Janine Wedel uncovers how the arrival of a Western armada of ill informed consultants was soon followed by the subversion of funds by some Eastern politicians and bureaucrats for their own purposes. Within several years, Eastern Europeans were so frustrated and resentful that they began sending aid back overseas. The author shows how by mid decade, Western aid policies had often backfired, effectively discouraging market reforms and exasperating electorates who, remarkably, had voted back in the previously despised communists. The text explains where the Western dollars intended to aid Eastern Europe went, and why they did so little to help. Taking a hard, behind the scenes look at the bureaucrats, politicians, and consultants who worked to set up Western economic and political systems in Eastern Europe, the author details the extraordinary costs of institutional ignorance, cultural misunderstanding, and unrealistic expectations.