I recently visited the Soviet Union. I was there for only one week, as a tourist: time to get only a very limited and superficial impression of life there. Nevertheless, it was a sobering and thought-provoking experience. For even such a brief visit forces one to confront the problems raised by the evidently unideal character of the Soviet Union and other ̀ actually existing' socialist societies...

The capitalist and socialist societies of the 20 century assigned firms different roles within their economic systems. Enterprises transforming from socialist to market economies thus face fundamental organizational restructuring. Many former state-owned firms in the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe have failed at this task. These firms have pursued primarily defensive downsiz...

Religious socialization occurs within the immediate family as well as in the broader social context. Previous research has shown that parents’ religiosity matters less for the transmission of religious beliefs in devout than in secular nations, implying smaller costs of religious socialization. In this paper we test which other societal factors affect the transmission of religious beliefs: anti...

The capitalist and socialist societies of the 20 century assigned firms different roles within their economic systems. Enterprises transforming themselves from socialist to market economies thus face fundamental organizational restructuring. Many former state-owned firms in the transitional economies of Central and Eastern Europe failed, so far, at this task. Firms pursued primarily defensive d...

TV serials became the most important genre of the popular culture in Czechoslovakia during the period of so-called normalisation – the 1970s and the 1980s. The new post invasion regime shifted the propagandistic emphasis to the popular culture sphere and thus TV serials became a space, where the conscientiously controlled dominant ideology met the mindsets and opinions of the audience. The pape...

CONVERGENCE THEORIES OF THE 196OS AND I97OS PREDICTED THAT THE two rival political-economic systems would more or less rapidly assimilate each other and inevitably move toward one another. The East was to be enriched with market elements, while the "mixed" economic order of Westem capitalism had already adopted elements of state intervention into production and distribution processes. The probl...

Most discussions of basic income revolve around two clusters of issues: first, the normative implications of basic income for various conceptions of justice, and second, the pragmatic problems of the sustainability of basic income given a range of economic considerations including such things as effects on tax rates, incentives, labor markets, and so on. These are obviously important issues, bu...

Based on fieldwork in Yugoslavia and China. we compare medicine in two societies which are attempting to construct their own unique paths to socialism. After a brief description of each country and its sociopolitical system, we sketch the broad outlines of the health care system which has evolved. We then discuss certain constraints on achieving the socialist objectives of equality of access to...

This commentary addresses the marginal presense of authors, subjects, and issues focused on former socialist countries in Eastern Central Europe, Balkans Soviet Union "socialist studies" produced Western English-language based academic journals, as well so-called "global political Left" these publications support. The suggests that gap is epistemological, emotional, serving to protect conversat...

This article examines the US’s use of sanctions or unilateral coercive measures (economic war) and support for propaganda communicated through its own organised mass media supposedly “independent,” corporate as well social to instigate anti-government sentiment action (media war). The economic war against Cuba began soon after Cuba’s 1959 revolution, although hostile actions desires efforts sha...