The Fraser F-index of economic freedom measures the freedom to run a private business, measured as an aggregate of many primary indices organized in five groups. It begins in 1970, but it has only a couple of observations from the countries of the Soviet Bloc before 1990, and they are not convincing. The index shows a strong rise from 1975/80 to 2000 and stability since then. The data have a highly significant transition curve. However, it is almost linear over the full range. The main direction of causality is from income to the F-index, but there is some simultaneity. The B- and the F-indices have a correlation of only 0.2, so they do not measure the same. However, the transition curves are very similar.