Fifteen Years of Transformation in the Post-Communist World

The collapse of the Soviet empire freed hundreds of millions of people from communism. In most of the post-communist world, political freedom was followed by economic liberalization. The transition from central planning to the free market was uneven, however. In the early days after the fall of communism, two schools of thought about economic reform emerged. Some economists argued for a rapid break with the past, whereas others favored a more gradual approach. With the passage of time, it is now clear that rapid reforms were on the whole better than gradual reforms. Countries that adopted farreaching reforms tended to experience higher growth rates and lower inflation and received more foreign investment. Inequality increased less among rapid reformers than among gradual reformers. The same is true with respect to poverty rates. Importantly, rapid reformers developed better institutions than countries that opted for gradualism. In fact, all of the rapid reformers developed into liberal democracies, whereas in many of the gradual reformers, such as Russia, small groups of super-wealthy oligarchs captured the state and dominated its economic decisionmaking. The efficiency of large-scale privatizations was not dependent on the speed but on the transparency and honesty of the process. Future reformers should not be afraid of adopting rapid reforms. To gain maximum benefits from economic reforms, however, they need to ensure that the privatization process is more transparent than it has been in the past. In countries where the state has been captured by a small clique of oligarchs, rapid reforms may be politically impossible in the short run. Still, liberalization of the business environment, especially with regard to small and mediumsized enterprises, could stimulate the economy without being seen as a threat by the ruling oligarchy

Cultural Revolution: Mykhail Semenko, Ukrainian Futurism and the “National” Category

This paper examines Mykhail Semenko’s Futurist manifestos that developed an opposition between “national” and “international” art, and specifically called “national” art provincial and retrograde. In promoting the international European avant-garde, Semenko’s essays demonstrate how consistently he championed a contemporary and modern Ukrainian culture in the face of home-grown conservatism

Recovery and Growth in Transition: A Decade of Evidence

This paper reviews a range of studies that examine differences in growth performance among transition countries. There is a consensus in the literature about the core elements of transition and the policies necessary for sustainable growth, although considerable differences remain about how to implement these policies and about their proper sequencing. The empirical work identifies stabilization and structural reforms (e.g., market liberalization, private ownership) as important determinants of growth, but underlines the role of initial conditions and institutions.There is divergent evidence, however, on the importance of specific reforms. Traditional factor inputs have as yet no role in explaining growth. Copyright 2002, International Monetary Fund

Strongly localised molecular orbitals for α\alpha-quartz

A previously proposed computational procedure for constructing a set of nonorthogonal strongly localised one-electron molecular orbitals (O. Danyliv, L. Kantorovich - physics/0401107) is applied to a perfect $\alpha$-quartz crystal characterised by an intermediate type of chemical bonding. The orbitals are constructed by applying various localisation methods to canonical Hartree-Fock orbitals calculated for a succession of finite molecular clusters of increased size with appropriate boundary conditions. The calculated orbitals span the same occupied Fock space as the canonical HF solutions, but have an advantage of reflecting the true chemical nature of the bonding in the system. The applicability of several localisation techniques as well as of a number of possible choices of localisation regions (structure elements) are discussed for this system in detail

Symbolic transformation of the widows image in biblical cultural tradition: semantics, analogies, universal features

The purpose of the work is to analyze the specific features of a widow’s image and status on the Bible pages, to consider semantic contexts of an image, to follow the parallels between the images of an orphan and a widow, to conceive a loneliness phenomenon and orphans’ and widows’ protection in Biblical tradition. Axiological variety and poly vector spiritual and semantic representation of Biblical women’images are the main focuses of the issue. Methodologically the issue is based on the original source of the Bible. The work is based on methodical description of the women’images, who are selected from the Old and New Testament in order to highlight valued features of each image. Moreover, the methods of semantic analysis and hermeneutics are applied to consider semantic differences. The principles of comparative analysis are applied in order to reveal the traits of a widow’s image in the blocks of historical texts and compare Ukrainian context of widows’ existence with biblical one. Scientific novelty is in the poly semantic analysis of the women’Biblical context and widows’ images separation with further analysis of their fates, valued statuses, which allowed them to embody the problems of motherhood and marriage, future children birth and solitude, the problem of divine protection in different ways. The issue is devoted to the consideration of symbolic and axiological poly vector transformations of the mentioned problems. Conclusions. The social polarity and spiritual separation of a widow’s place and role in ancient tradition, and poly vector semantics of a widow’s Biblical context are conceived. The attention is drawn to the varied