Between 1990 and 2003, I worked on and published an informal trilogy on the complex history of Central and Eastern Europe during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (I. Berend, 1996; 1998; 2003). Now I am going to present a volume on the exciting economic and social history of postcommunist transformation of these countries that led to their joining the European Union. The beginning of the story, however, goes back to 1973, the year when a gradually emerging, long-lasting, and fatal crisis became manifest, signaled a turning point, and undermined the state socialist regime, leading to its collapse in 1989. Without understanding that period and its main problems, one cannot understand the post-1989 transformation process and its difficulties.

Some readers might be familiar with my 1996 Cambridge University Press book, Central and Eastern Europe 1944–1993: Detour from the Periphery to the Periphery. The last two decades I discussed in that earlier book will be covered again in this volume. This reexamination is necessary because of the quarry of information I mined during the past decade and a half, the huge reservoir of new statistical and scholarly research, including my research on the most striking and controversial new development of the world economy, globalization (I. Berend, 2008).

The historical perspective on developments after the collapse of state socialism is equally important. It facilitates deeper research and a clearer historical picture of that period.