Start-up Poland : the people who transformed an economy / Jan Cienski.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cieński, Jan, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Entrepreneurship--Poland--History--20th century.

Entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship--Poland--History--21st century.

Businesspeople--Poland.

Businesspeople.

Post-communism--Economic aspects.

Post-communism.

History.

Poland--Economic conditions--1990-.

Poland.

Economic conditions.

Post-communism--Economic aspects--Poland.

Economic history.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xiii, 251 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, [2018]

Summary:

Poland in the 1980s was filled with shuttered restaurants and shops that bore such imaginative names as "bread," "shoes," and "milk products," from which lines could stretch for days on the mere rumor there was something worth buying. But you'd be hard-pressed to recognize the same squares buzzing with bars and cafes today. In the years since the collapse of communism, Poland's GDP has almost tripled, making it the eight-largest economy in the European Union, with a wealth of well-educated and highly skilled workers and a buoyant private sector that competes in international markets. Many consider it one of the only European countries to have truly weathered the financial crisis. As the Warsaw bureau chief for the Financial Times, Jan Cienski spent more than a decade talking with the people who did something that had never been done before: recreating a market economy out of a socialist one. Poland had always lagged behind wealthier Western Europe, but in the 1980s the gap had grown to its widest in centuries. But the corrupt Polish version of communism also created the conditions for its eventual revitalization, bringing forth a remarkably resilient and entrepreneurial people prepared to brave red tape and limited access to capital. In the 1990s, more than a million Polish people opened their own businesses, selling everything from bicycles to leather jackets, Japanese VCRs, and romance novels. The most business-savvy turned those primitive operations into complex corporations that now have global reach.

Contents:

From People's Poland to the Third Republic

In the starting blocks

Shocked by therapy

The survivors

Oligarchs?

White socks and dark suits: the Polish quest for luxury

The Red Press baron

On the move

A question of scale

Crushed by capitalism or by the visible hand of the government?

New businesses

Halfway there.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780226306810

022630681X

OCLC:

975445415