REINHARD ENGEL
51
Western bankers, intellectuals, and entrepreneurs were astounded by the
totally new turn of events.
In
1989,
international businesses immediately recognized Eastern
Europe as a new market. They knew about the lack of consumer prod–
ucts, and welcomed opportunities for the sale of goods. Eastern Europe,
including Russia, needed, for instance, about three million cars per year.
Every large Western supermarket chain mapped out its marketing
strategies. Though at first a bit insecure, industry too made its plans
soon after the "turn." The production director of Philips-Austria, for
instance, recalls that at the beginning of the
1990S
he could not believe
that they were suddenly able to compete with Asian firms-even after
a period of turbulence for Philips. Extensive restructuring was to have
saved this electronics giant, a restructuring which would have included
closing down various enterprises. One Austrian firm was on that list,
and it could only be saved by lining it up with new Hungarian manu–
facturing sites that produced standard stereo equipment much more
cheaply.
Essentially, European enterprises had lost some of their international
competiti veness. Exchange ra tes were u nfa vora ble, especia Ily for
France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Austria. The unexpected incor–
poration of the former East Germany further aggravated this situation.
But the opening up of Eastern Europe provided new vistas, mostly due
to the low cost of labor and the fact that it saved time to produce goods
nearby rather than in Asia. Before long, customers began to order mer–
chandise from one day to the next, thus further shortening the produc–
tion cycle.
Ultimately, the communist elites renounced power without any
bloodshed. (Only the Prague secret service wanted to show the party its
strength by means of an outburst of brutality against peaceful demon–
strators; and in Romania there was a short, bloody revolution.) Sud–
denly former dissidents were in the chancelleries, parliaments and
presidential offices. They were poets and historians, philosophers and
writers, but rarely women and men with any practical political or eco–
nomIc expenence.
Then, the forces of reform were in the vanguard. They were opposed
by the elites of the communist party who had outlived the "turn" polit–
ically and had now in part moved to the new parties on the social demo–
cratic left. But the lacunae after the fall of communism were enormous:
there were no counterlists, no theories, no organizations, no movements
or projects that could be followed, nor any visions. What came after
