Second Thoughts from the Second World: Interpreting Aid in Post-Communist Eastern Europe

While some aspects of the socialist past made aid essential to political and economic transition in eastern Europe after 1989, other socialist legacies seemed to undermine aid programs. As a result, aid ended up actually reproducing characteristics of socialist practice that it was intended to redress. This article accounts for such an outcome by outlining the special problems of aid in the post-communist context. It then draws on case studies of aid in Bulgaria and Russia to illustrate these suggestions. Attention to the east European case also suggests broader lessons for aid providers, notably the need to pay greater attention to local interpretations of the idiom of aid in the post-Cold War era, when competing spheres of influence no longer motivate aid efforts.