From Berlin to the Bering Strait, the business of banking has sprung to life. This analysis considers the impact of banking reform on macroeconomic stabilization and the suitability of universal banks, the role of banking regulation and the advantages of 'narrow banks' during transition, the cleaning up of bad debts, and the reform of the payments system.

The book assesses the lessons which can be drawn from reforms in Central Europe for the later reformers in the former Soviet Union and the Balkans. It considers the impact of banking reform on macroeconomic stabilization and the suitability of German-type universal banks; the role of banking regulation and the advantages of 'narrow banks' during transition; the cleaning-up of bad debts; bank privatization and reform of the payments system. Five chapters follow which review the experience of some of the 'second-wave' countries: Estonia, Georgia, Romania, Russia and Ukraine.

The tenth anniversary of the collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe is the basis for this text which reflects upon the past ten years and what lies ahead for the future. An international group of academics and public intellectuals, including former dissidents and active politicians, engage in an exchange on the antecedents, causes, contexts, meanings and legacies of the 1989 revolutions. The contributors address various issues including liberal democracy and its enemies; modernity and discontent; economic reforms and their social impact; ethnicity; nationalism and religion; geopolitics; electoral systems and political power; European integration; and the demise of Yugoslavia.

This Biographical Dictionary describes the lives, works and aspirations of more than 150 women and men who were active in, or part of, women’s movements and feminisms in Central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe. Thus, it challenges the widely held belief that there was no historical feminism in this part of Europe. These innovative and often moving biographical portraits not only show that feminists existed here, but also that they were widespread and diverse, and included Romanian princesses, Serbian philosophers and peasants, Latvian and Slovakian novelists, Albanian teachers, Hungarian Christian social workers and activists of the Catholic women’s movement, Austrian factory workers, Bulgarian feminist scientists and socialist feminists, Russian radicals, philanthropists, militant suffragists and Bolshevik activists, prominent writers and philosophers of the Ottoman era, as well as Turkish republican leftist political activists and nationalists, internationally recognized Greek feminist leaders, Estonian pharmacologists and science historians, Slovenian ‘literary feminists,’ Czech avant-garde painters, Ukrainian feminist scholars, Polish and Czech Senate Members, and many more. Their stories together constitute a rich tapestry of feminist activity and redress a serious imbalance in the historiography of women’s movements and feminisms.