Historicizing postsocialist privatization at the juncture of the cultural and the economic

Privatization was one of the key mechanisms in the transformation from planned to market economies in the former Eastern Bloc following the collapse of communist regimes. Although this radical change in ownership structures is most often understood as belonging to the sphere of the economy, it also profoundly affected society and shared values. As historians are increasingly turning to the post-1989 period in Central and Eastern Europe, this introduction and special issue argue that economic and political history alone are not sufficient to investigate the process of privatization; approaches from social and cultural history are also necessary. Transformation, and privatization in particular, was the result of complex interactions between the economic policies of nation-states, the actions of transnational organizations and private corporations, the development of global capitalism, but also of local traditions, cultural stereotypes and representations, and the transformation of institutions other than political and economic ones. By taking into account this complex nexus of factors, we argue, historical research can bring a new quality to the existing social science work on postsocialist privatization and economic transformation more generally.