Janine Wedel - Collision and Collusion - The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe

  21. Quoted in Janine Wedel, The Private Poland: An Anthropologist’s Look at Everyday Life, New York, NY: Facts on File, 1986, p. 163.

  22. See, for example, OECD, Aid and Other Resource Flows to the Central and Eastern European Countries and the New Independent States of the Former Soviet Union (1990-1995), January 29, 1998, p. 36. Not all situations were clear: Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, although Central Asian, were rich with oil and minerals, respectively.

  23. The publications, Transition: The Newsletter about Reforming Economies and Transitions: Changes in Post-Communist Societies, have tracked the long-standing debates on this issue.

  24. Quoted in George M. Taber, “Rx for Russia: Shock Therapy,” Time, January 27, 1992, p. 37. (Cited in Walter Adams and James W. Brock, Adam Smith Goes to Moscow, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993, p. 40.)

  25. Quoted in János Kornai, Road to a Free Economy, New York, NY: Norton, p. 161. (Cited in Walter Adams and James W. Brock, Adam Smith Goes to Moscow, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993, pp. 17-18.)

  26. Jeffrey Sachs, “The Economic Transformation of Eastern Europe: The Case of Poland,” American Economist, vol. 36, Fall 1992, pp. 3-11.

  27. This assessment was shared by many analysts of Central and Eastern European aid, including the GAO ( Poland and Hungary: Economic Transition and U.S. Assistance, Washington, D.C.: United States General Accounting Office, May 1, 1992, pp. 30-31) and the Institute for East West Studies (Raymond Barre, William H. Luers, Anthony Solomon, and Krzysztof J. Ners, Moving Beyond Assistance, New York, NY: Institute for East West Studies, June 1992).

  28. Gerald Creed, “Second Thoughts from the Second World: Interpreting Aid in Post-Communist Eastern Europe,” with Janine R. Wedel, Human Organization, vol. 56, no. 3, Fall 1997, p. 253.

  29. C. M. Hann, The Skeleton at the Feast: Contributions to East European Anthropology, Canterbury, United Kingdom: University of Kent at Canterbury, Centre for Social Anthropology and Computing, 1995, p. 19.

  30. Interview with Rita Klimova of September 1992, cited in Janine R. Wedel, “The Unintended Consequences of Western Aid to Post-Communist Europe,” Telos, no. 92, Summer 1992, p. 132.

  31. Cargo Cults are movements in colonial New Guinea and Melanesia based on the belief that large loads of European luxury goods would accompany the return of ancestral spirits. See, for example, Eleanor Smollett, “America the Beautiful: Made in Bulgaria,” Anthropology Today, vol. 9, no. 2, 1993, p. 12; David Lempert, “Changing Russian Political Culture in the 1990s: Parasites, Paradigms, and Perestroika,” Comparative Studies in History and Society, vol. 35, 1993, p. 643; Katherine Verdery, What Was Socialism and What Comes Next? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996, p. 189; and David Ellerman, “Voucher Privatization with Investment Funds: An Institutional Analysis,” Policy Research Working Paper 1924, Washington D.C.: The World Bank, Office of the Senior Vice President, Development Economics, May 1998, p. 7.

  32. U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1990 Census of Population, Supplementary Reports, Detailed Ancestry Groups for States (1990 CP-S-1-2).

  33. David A. Kideckel, “Us and Them: Concepts of East and West in the East European Transition,” Cultural Dilemmas of Post-Communist Societies, Aldona Jawlowska and Marian Kempny, eds, Warsaw, Poland: IFiS Publishers, 1994, p. 135.

  34. Václav Havel, “The Power of the Powerless,” The Power of the Powerless: Citizens Against the State in Central-Eastern Europe, John Keane, ed., Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1985, pp. 23-96.

  35. Cited in Janine Wedel, The Private Poland: An Anthropologist’s Look at Everyday Life, New York, NY: Facts on File, 1986, p. 129.

  36. Gerald Creed, “Second Thoughts from the Second World: Interpreting Aid in Post-Communist Eastern Europe,” with Janine R. Wedel, Human Organization, vol. 56, no. 3, Fall 1997, p. 32.

  37. Tadeusz Wróblewski (a pseudonym to protect identities), “The Opposition and Money,” The Unplanned Society: Poland During and After Communism, Janine R. Wedel, ed., New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1992, p. 239.

  38. U.S. General Accounting Office, Eastern Europe: Status of U.S. Assistance, Washington, D.C.: General Accounting Office, February 26, 1991, appendix 1.

  39. Interview of October 31, 1996, with Steve Dean, division chief, Contracts Division for Eastern Europe and the New Independent States of USAID’s procurement office.

  40. The responsibilities of the G-24 were assumed by other bodies in 1991; the G-24 did not become involved in coordinating aid efforts to the former Soviet Union. For details, see Stephan Haggard and Andrew Moravcsik, “The Political Economy of Financial Assistance to Eastern Europe, 1989-1991,” After the Cold War: International Institutions and State Strategies in Europe, 1989-1991, Robert O. Keohane, Joseph S. Nye, and Stanley Hoffman, eds., Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993, pp. 258-261.

  41. Interview with Andrew Rasbash, January 29, 1992.

  42. Interview of October 31, 1996, with Steve Dean, division chief, Contracts Division for Eastern Europe and the New Independent States of USAID’s procurement office. Note that on July 1, 1998, long after the period of intense aid efforts in Central and Eastern Europe, two of the “Big Six” accounting firms merged: Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand became Price Waterhouse Coopers.

  43. Several donor officials also emphasized this point at the working conference co-organized by the author in April 1995 and cosponsored by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. See report of the Conference by John Harper and Janine R. Wedel, Western Aid to Central and Eastern Europe: What We Are Doing Right, What We Are Doing Wrong, and How We can Do it Better, East European Studies Occasional paper: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, no. 41, September 1995, p. 24.

  44. Interview with Richard L. Morningstar, September 30, 1996.

  45. Interview with U.S. procurement officer Steve Dean, January 7, 1998, (Also Katrina Greene interview of July 19, 1995, with Steve Dean, division chief, Contracts Division for Eastern Europe and the New Independent States of USAID’s procurement office.)

  46. Interview with U.S. procurement officer Steve Dean, January 7, 1998, and interview with U.S. procurement officer William Penoyar, January 16, 1998.

  47. Interview with Stanley R. Nevin, August 24, 1996.

  48. EU guidelines, and interview with British Know How Fund official Charlotte Seymour-Smith, December 8, 1995.

  49. Officials who acknowledged this in public include U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger and U.S. Secretary of Commerce Robert Mossbacher at a meeting of Western leaders. (Reported by Mary Brasier in “Clash Over Aid for Eastern Europe,” Guardian, May 24, 1990.)

  50. Interview with Witold Trzeciakowski, May 10, 1997.

  51. Figures on Marshall Plan were provided by David Patterson, deputy historian, Department of State Public Affairs, Office of the Historian (conversations of May 8 and May 12, 1997). Figures on aid to the former Eastern Bloc were cited in a study by Polish economist Krzysztof Ners (William Drozdiak, “E. Europeans Say West Fails in Aid Pledges,” Washington Post, June 17, 1992, p. A33).