Sunday June 4, 1990 was a sunny day in Moscow. My host woke me up to tell me that Ayatollah Khomeini had died, but that was only the third news item on the BBC World Service. On the same day, the Chinese communist dictators massacred democratic protesters on Tiananmen Square, while Poland held partially democratic parliamentary elections. For me, communism ended on that day. Soon, one communist domino after another was to fall.

This was an extraordinary event. A complete ideological, political, economic, and social system just passed away, and a large part of the world with some 400 million inhabitants was to choose new shape in every regard, including what countries they should divide themselves into. This was one of the greatest revolutions the world has seen, and it was a liberal revolution in the classical European sense.

The time had come for an unequivocal rejection of the socialist system. Overtly, a broad consensus aspired to democracy, a normal market economy based on private ownership and rule of law, but the actual opposition to these goals was expressed in disagreement on how to accomplish these purportedly common aims, and soon the opposition came into the open.

This attempt at building capitalism and the resistance it faced are the themes of this book. Over a decade has passed since the demise of communism in what used to be called Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and it is time to take stock.