Recent Controversies Regarding The Delays In The Economic Development Of The Countries From Eastern Europe

The European integration is the best way for the poor Eastern European societies to follow in order to progress. Gathering contacts with the Occident cannot push the former communist societies to the status of chronically backward peripheries. The theory of "modernization" claims that the mere contact with the western modernity is sufficient to remove the elements of the traditional societies which hinder the development and generate progress automatically. Countries, which suffered from the "dependence” syndrome, reached this situation because they had already been very backward while integrating themselves into the modern world. Since then, the intensification of contacts with the advanced regions of the world has had beneficial effects on them. The remedy lies in gathering contacts with the advanced economies and imitating the development model from the Occident. In the north-west Europe, the combination of strong cities and the absence of a strong imperial authority created large jumps, which led to the Western progress. Eastern Europe had already recorded a very serious negative gap around the years 1500-1600. The contrast between the political regimes of imperial type and those of Ständestaat type, or that between the innovative scientific thinking and the conservative philosophical traditions may explain the differences between Western and Eastern Europe. The predominance of the economies of pastoral type compared to the agricultural one in the south-east Europe, as well as the low population density determined development gaps. The more some part of the region was exposed to Western influence, the more developed it became. The past cannot explain the future, but it can draw some limits among which the change can take place and it can print to this its main direction.