When the Marshall Plan was conceived in 1947, much of Western Europe was midway through a process of economic reconstruction, though it seemed that further progress was being choked by a lack of hard currency reserves. By the time the next four years had passed, recovery had been such that output had surged past its pre-war peak and programs were in place to foster economic collaboration and interdependence. Parallels between the situation in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe at their own critical junctures in their transitions to democratic market economies at the end of the Cold War were suggestive. Just as the Marshall Plan had facilitated the rebuilding of post-World War II Europe, so the idea was revived as the means for facilitating the transformation of post-Cold War Europe.

For many policy-makers and commentators the Marshall Plan was nothing more (and nothing less) than a metaphor for a deep-rooted feeling that the West should be doing more for its ex-adversaries on the other side of the Iron Curtain. The Cold War had suddenly been won, with very little anticipation and without NATO having to fire a shot. And when the arch-enemy, the Soviet Union, then proceeded to dissolve itself and embrace Western, capitalist standards and values, it almost defied belief. With the West anticipating a large ‘peace dividend’ there were many that felt that a generous, structured commitment of assistance would not be out of place. It is one of the greatest tributes that can be paid to the Truman administration that, over forty years since its conception, the Marshall Plan should still symbolise these noble ideals and become the means for articulating them. In both Eastern Europe and Russia, there were repeated calls for a ‘Marshall Plan’ to assist these countries’ economic reconstruction and, implicitly, their political transformation.

These appeals all fell on deaf ears and, to date, there has been no concerted transfer of official resources on a scale to match that of the Marshall Plan. This did not mean that there have been no official resource transfers. The main official resource has been the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, whose assistance, however, was offered under strict, and often unacceptable conditions.