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The Czech course of post-socialist economic transformation : a complexity-based approach. The purpose of this article is to offer a stylized description of the course of post- socialist changes in the Czech Republic, using a complexity-based approach. This should make it possible to assemble a coherent body of ideas relating to the study of economic change in Central and Eastern Europe, ideas which in most writings on the subject tend to emerge in isolation, thus : complex system, self-organization, emergence, trajectory, path dependence, lock-in, non-linear dynamics, irreversibility. Self-reorganization of the four economic sub-systems identified, and of their interrelations, i.e. the system of production, the financial system, the socio-economic compromise and the State, leads to the appearance of hybrid institutional and organizational forms in the post-socialist transitional phase, in particular : a complex form of quasi-private ownership (involving banks, enterprises and the State), original post- socialist organisational bodies, a multiple financial market, an implicit manager/employee social pact, a form of State market paternalism. In the short term, this general configuration appears to underpin a Czech growth model whose dynamic in the middle term is uncertain.

Economie inequalities, old and new : the Czech experience. During the period of transition, the question of economic inequalities takes on, for a variety of reasons, a new importance and a new significance. There are a good many people for whom economic reform has meant considerable financial difficulty, or indeed poverty. At the same time, privatization, the restitution of property and the existence of private business undertakings create wealth : consequently, these factors call into question the earlier option of "supposed equality", and their legitimacy is challenged. In conditions of newly acquired political freedom, the problem of inequality can be openly discussed, and handled as a political issue. In the present article, the intention is to analyse the root causes of the existing situation, and to list recent changes as they are reflected in the various forms of the phenomenon of inequality. The first part deals with the legacy of communist society, which was a mixture of equality and privilege. The second has to do with the order of the market, which has to be defined more broadly then as a fundamentally homogeneous system, satisfied with replacing an inequitable equality with an equitable inequality. The third part is concerned with new sources of wealth and poverty, and their impact on society. Finally, there is a comparison of the changes that have objectively come about in the context of economic inequality, and the view which people have of them. In conclusion, there will be an analysis of the situation and specific problems of the Czech Republic in relation to the other countries of Eastern Europe.

Reconstruction of the political landscape of East Germany post-1989. The problems involved in the building of a democratic régime, and transition to a market economy, are certainly not specific to East Germany, but their special nature is to be closely bound up with the problems of German reunification. The GDR moved from one camp to the other more speedily than all the other countries of Central and Eastern Europe. It underwent transition to a market economy, and the most violent political reforms without the benefit of any degree of gradualism to alleviate the violence of the shock engendered by economic stabilization measures and political changes. In the end, East Germany's problems may not have differed widely from those experienced by other post-communist countries, but they nevertheless differed in intensity, and were compounded by the problems arising from the integration of the GDR into the political, economic, social and administrative system of West Germany. And after all, it is only four years after reunification that, out of the five new German Lander, an original political lanscape, different from that of the West, is taking shape. What conclusions, then, should be drawn from the emergence of differences on the East German political scene, while the unification of the two parts of the country is proceeding in an orderly fashion in other sectors ? Are we witnessing the ill effects of unhealthy processes, for example the failure of an over-abrupt attempt at reunification, or perhaps we are seeing the reaction of a post-communist society in the effort to adapt, a reaction similar to those met within other former socialist-bloc countries, a reaction which, owing to the fact of reunification, has been displaced in its timing ? A study of the shaping of the political landscape, following on the revolution of Autumn 1989, together with an analysis of the implementation of political unification and its consequences in East Germany, affords valuable insights on the subject.

Towards an interpretation of the new post-communist nationalism : the case of Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav case is one of post-communist nationalism, among all the other communist countries which have been unable to resolve the nationalist question, driven by a power-hungry political class. The post-communist nationalism being encountered is a new phenomenon, though still having links with the preceding political system which, through different policies, made it possible. Tito's men prepared the ground for the growth of nationalist ideology. In a confused situation, the active elements in society, in the absence of a State, set about creating a new Nation-State, on new foundations, in an effort to make a clean break with the past. However, finding a definition for the nation remains a thorny problem, leaving the options open to every possible theory. Various common criteria are applied (language, religion, history, territory, etc.), none of them proving entirely satisfactory. The criteria involved are primarily political, the aim being to create an organic entity. Post-communist nationalism is built in opposition to the Other, along regressive lines. The ideology of post-communist nationalism is inherent within all nationalist groups, with fundamentally different power relationships (particularly military) among the various groups in question. There are few grounds for optimism, since extended analysis of this manifestation holds out little hope of any favourable short-term development in the situation in this part of Europe. The absence of special affinities with democracy offers a fair prospect of nationalist hostilities still to come.

Leninist project and Russian heritage. By the year 1917, Russia's accumulated backwardness, burdensome though it might be, cannot be regarded simply as a hindrance bequeathed by the old régime, whose overthrow was widely held to have caused an abrupt break in the country's historical continuity. It is one of the parameters of the new society which took shape after the revolution, and which is defined primarily by the new kind of relationship which is maintained with the government. The purpose of the present study is not to analyse this state of backwardness as such, in other words, with its attendant statistical and economic data, but rather to understand the part played by this concept in the Leninist dialogue. By the same token, one cannot approach the Russian heritage in terms of its material (economic and institutional) legacy. The author concentrates his analysis on the weight carried by this heritage in Bolshevik ideology, and tries to emphasize the elements of continuity which, regardless of the break, bind the new régime to the old. His conclusion is that, while there may have been a break ideologically and politically (despite the persistence of the "authoritarian" tradition), economically it is continuity which prevails.