About a generation ago, on November 8, 1989, the Berlin Wall collapsed. It was a momentous event in modern history that marked the rise of the United States as the sole global superpower, and shortly thereafter, the rise of the European Union (EU) as a supranational concept dominating national European government policymaking in a range of areas.
Yet, just as the Berlin Wall crumbled, so did the state-socialist command economies of the former Communist bloc. For the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), some of which famously led the charge against Soviet domination, in preceding decades, the result was widespread economic dislocation and a precipitous drop in living standards for ordinary people.