Above: A welder works on an engine component at the GE Hungary shop in Veresegyház Illés Szemán Senior Logistics Manager of GE Aviation Hungary A repair specialist in Veresegyház inspects a CFM56 engine fan blade © document.write(new Date().getFullYear()) General Electric Company Please visit these standalone sites for more information GE Aerospace | GE Vernova | GE HealthCare  “The Metem acquisition is another milestone in the history of GE’s partnership with Hungary strengthening our common commitment to long-term growth and expanding our industrial footprint in the country  We’re excited to welcome Metem’s employees to GE and we’re expecting a fast and seamless integration,” said Joerg Bauer By bringing the Metem cooling hole-drilling capability in house GE expects to realize supply chain efficiencies and reduce costs as it continues to strengthen its advanced GE’s HA gas turbines can achieve more than 62 percent efficiency Achieving that level of efficiency subjects heavy-duty gas turbines to very high temperatures during operations With heavy-duty gas turbine blades operating under high temperatures and experiencing significant centrifugal stresses turbine blade cooling is an important component of GE’s next generation of advanced gas turbines “Gas turbines coupled with services are the core of GE Power and Metem’s acquisition will help achieve synergies by improving the overall cost base of products and enhancing the GE Store capabilities for customers,” said Mike Chanatry GE and Metem have had a very strong relationship since the 1970s driven by Metem’s record of innovation and technology development and the strength of its workforce This acquisition is strategic for GE Power as demand for advanced manufacturing technologies significantly increases as products evolve Chanatry says that GE expects to build out the capabilities and capacity of the Metem network Metem’s entire workforce of approximately 270 employees as well as the company’s facilities and resources in New Jersey will be integrated into GE over the next six to 12 months will be transformed into a Center of Excellence for GE Power Metem Corporation is a specialized global supplier of machining and assembled turbine super-alloy components in the power generation and aerospace industries Metem has grown into one of the largest high-volume non-conventional machining companies in the world by emphasizing innovation advanced technologies and operational excellence Metem set up an advanced STEM and EDM manufacturing facility in Százhalombatta (MEU) -  to drill cooling holes on 50 hertz engines and provide regionally competitive service parts Apr 4th 2016 GE Expands High-Efficiency Capabilities with Completed Acquisition.. Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker Foreign Affairs has been the leading forum for serious discussion of American foreign policy and global affairs The magazine has featured contributions from many leading international affairs experts ANDREI SHLEIFER is Professor of Economics at Harvard University. DANIEL TREISMAN is Professor of Political Science at the University of California and the author of The Return: Russia’s Journey From Gorbachev to Medvedev.  Andrei Shleifer and Daniel Treisman Twenty-five years after the Berlin Wall came down a sense of missed opportunity hangs over the countries that once lay to its east hopes ran high amid the euphoria that greeted the sudden implosion of communism democracy and prosperity seemed to be just around the corner the postcommunist countries are seen as failures their economies peopled by struggling pensioners and strutting oligarchs their politics marred by ballot stuffing and emerging dictators From the former Yugoslavia to Chechnya and now eastern Ukraine wars have punctured the 40-plus years of cold peace on the European continent leaving behind enclaves of smoldering violence Russian President Vladimir Putin’s autocratic grip and aggressive geopolitics symbolize a more general democratic decay spreading from the east “The worst thing about communism,” quipped the Polish newspaper editor and anticommunist dissident Adam Michnik An anniversary is a good moment to take stock Much has changed since the postcommunist countries -- the 15 successor states of the Soviet Union the 14 formerly communist states of eastern Europe and the former Soviet satellite Mongolia -- shook off Marxist tyrannies a generation ago But writing off postcommunist reforms as a failure would be a mistake and one with implications far beyond the region struck by China’s rise and shocked by the global financial crisis have recently cast authoritarian state capitalism as a vibrant alternative to the dysfunctions of liberal democracy The erroneous belief that market reform has flopped in eastern Europe reinforces this delusion The truth is that the prevailing gloomy narrative about the postcommunist world is mostly wrong life has improved dramatically across the former Eastern bloc the postcommunist countries have grown rapidly; today these states now look just like any others at similar levels of economic development the transition states have become far more diverse they have yielded to the gravitational pull of their nearest noncommunist neighbors: the countries of central Europe have become more European; those of Central Asia their paths will likely continue to reflect the competition between the same two forces: the global dynamic of modernization and the tug of geography To understand how much the postcommunist countries have changed all were authoritarian states governed by a ruling party Each had propagandists to tell people what to think All staged farcical elections in which the party won more than 95 percent of the vote With the exceptions of Yugoslavia and post-1960 Albania which sent tanks to Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 to crush popular uprisings All the communist-bloc countries had centrally controlled economies Most or all property belonged to the state and prices were set by planners rather than markets Heavy industry dominated as services languished the military consumed up to 25 percent of GDP in the late 1980s compared with under six percent in the United States Soviet factories had produced a stock of 45,000 nuclear warheads applicants in Bulgaria had to wait up to 20 years up to 30 years; a quarter of the people filling the Soviet waiting lists were already pensioners Car buyers in East Germany had to place their orders 15 years in advance the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu put all citizens on a low-calorie diet in the early 1980s to save money for repaying the country’s foreign debt He limited lighting to one 40-watt bulb per room heating in public buildings to 57 degrees Fahrenheit and television programming to two tedious hours a day The communist countries could claim some achievements With just eight percent of the world’s population the Soviet Union and other Eastern-bloc countries won 48 percent of the medals at the 1988 Seoul Olympics and boasted 53 of the world’s 100 top chess players that year the Czech Republic’s dissident turned president and stinking machine.” Years after leaving power characterized the economy he once oversaw as “voracious” and “resource-squandering.” New leaders elected across the former communist bloc found their economies in crisis inflation hit 640 percent in Poland and 2,700 percent in Yugoslavia its output was falling by 15 percent a year All the postcommunist governments enacted reforms -- designed to deregulate prices and construct social welfare programs -- although some pursued them with greater speed and vigor than others more market friendly than the rest of the world they averaged 7.0 on the index of economic freedom compiled annually by the Fraser Institute ranked right between Denmark and the United States state-owned industrial dinosaurs gave way to private firms which began to account for a greater share of GDP The median share of private-sector output in the postcommunist countries now stands at 70 percent services grew from 36 percent to 58 percent of national output between 1990 and 2012 In no other region of the world has international trade expanded as fast with the average volume of imports and exports together soaring from 75 percent to 114 percent of GDP After decades spent trading largely with one another the postcommunist states swiftly reoriented themselves toward foreign markets in Europe and elsewhere the share of exports they sent to the eu had grown -- to a median value of 69 percent for the eastern European countries and 47 percent for the former Soviet republics the countries have transformed their militarized and state-dominated systems into service-oriented market economies based on private ownership and integrated into global commercial networks No longer distorted to fit Marxist blueprints and regulatory environments today look much like those of other countries at similar income levels observers often blame postcommunist reforms for poor economic performance in the transition states Two common charges are that the reforms were fundamentally misconceived and that they were implemented in too radical a fashion Such criticism raises two questions: first whether the states’ economic performance has indeed been poor whether more radical strategies resulted in worse outcomes than more gradual approaches A logical starting point in assessing a country’s economic performance is its national income but any comparison that uses Soviet-era figures must be taken with a grain of salt much of the output that communist-era accountants recorded was worth far less than they claimed Factories overreported production in order to win bonuses inflating GDP figures by as much as five percent Many goods they did produce were of such poor quality that consumers refused to buy them Governments launched huge construction projects that were never completed (but still counted as investment spending augmenting GDP values) and sustained massive defense outlays of highly questionable value Very little of the countries’ official national incomes ended up in citizens’ pockets household consumption in most noncommunist countries represented more than 60 percent of GDP this measure stood at less than one-third of GDP Much of the economic slump recorded in the early years of the postcommunist transition -- half of it by some estimates -- reflected cuts in fictitious output or worthless investments But even if the official figures are taken at face value the picture they reveal is brighter than is generally assumed the median postcommunist country in terms of growth (Uzbekistan) expanded slightly faster between 1990 and 2011 than the median country elsewhere in the world (Norway) Whereas Norway’s GDP per capita grew by 45 percent between these years where national income increased by more than 450 percent had the world’s third-highest growth rate over that period All three outpaced such traditional growth engines as Hong Kong and Singapore The rise in consumption was equally dramatic household consumption per capita in the postcommunist countries grew compared with an average increase of 56 percent elsewhere in the world the level increased by more than 100 percent Regular people saw significant improvements in their living standards rose in the postcommunist space even as GDP fell in the early transition years the average number of passenger cars climbed from one for every ten people to one for every four there are now more cars per person than in the United Kingdom evolving from a backwater to an overachiever the region’s cell-phone subscriptions per person The postcommunist world now boasts a higher percentage of Internet users -- 54 percent of the population in the average country -- than any other region except North America and western Europe The citizens of the postcommunist states also travel more than ever before; they made almost 170 million foreign tourist trips in 2012 living space per person has expanded by 99 percent in the Czech Republic Thanks to mass housing-privatization programs rates of homeownership have surged to some of the highest worldwide In seven of the nine former Soviet republics that publish relevant statistics consumption of fruits and vegetables has shot up ate 58 percent more vegetables and 47 percent more fruit in 2011 than they did 20 years earlier and Slovenia experienced what medical researchers described in 2008 in the European Journal of Epidemiology as “probably the most rapid decrease in coronary heart disease ever observed” after consumers began substituting vegetable oils for animal fats statistics contradict the stereotype of societies split between oligarchs and beggars rising by an average of 33 percent by 2012 the average share of secondary-school graduates who chose to continue their studies was higher than the corresponding percentage in Switzerland Although the rates of both poverty and income inequality often increased early in the transition these rates are now lower in the postcommunist states than in other economies with comparable income levels Governments are also doing more to ensure that citizens breathe cleaner air Communism left behind a forest of smokestacks the 11 postcommunist countries that joined the EU have slashed their emissions of carbon monoxide 12 post-Soviet republics cut the release of harmful pollutants from stationary sources into the atmosphere by an average of 66 percent between 1991 and 2012 And despite the frequent accounts of soaring mortality amid the stress of transition the region’s demographic trends are far from bleak life expectancy in the postcommunist states rose from 69 years in 1990 to 73 years in 2012 long portrayed as a demographic disaster zone life expectancy now stands at slightly over 70 years -- higher than it has ever been fell faster in the postcommunist countries in percentage terms than in any other region between 1990 and 2012 Average alcohol consumption inched downward from 2.1 gallons of pure alcohol a year in 1990 to 2.0 gallons in 2010 There have been exceptions: drinking rates rose in Russia and the Baltic states But even Russia’s 2010 average of 2.9 gallons was lower than that of Austria Important as such advances in living standards are the most fundamental transformation in the former Eastern bloc was political The citizens of most of the transition states live under governments that are more free and open today than at any point in their history Even against the backdrop of democracy’s global resurgence in recent decades the extent of political change in the former Eastern bloc is remarkable Using the most common measure of political regimes we placed countries on a scale from zero (for pure dictatorships) to 100 (for the strongest form of democracy) the Eastern-bloc states ranked between five (Albania) and 40 (Hungary) which was close to the ratings of Egypt and Iran Given their levels of economic development the communist countries stood out as abnormally authoritarian the average postcommunist country is exactly as free as one would expect it to be The postcommunist countries today are far from perfect But most of their deficiencies are typical of states at similar stages of economic development they perform better than their incomes would predict and in the few cases where they lag behind they are almost always headed in the right direction The region routinely scores poorly on indexes measuring perceived corruption This performance is not surprising given that such gauges are constructed in part from surveys of international businesspeople who are likely to be influenced by the region’s seamy image in the global media But the rates of bribery reported by citizens of the postcommunist countries on anonymous surveys paint a different picture are typical for countries at similar income levels Polls conducted between 2010 and 2013 by the watchdog group Transparency International showed that fewer people reported paying bribes in the average postcommunist state (23 percent) than in other countries (28 percent) the region does not differ from other places with comparable development levels Notwithstanding the wars in the former Yugoslavia the postcommunist countries were no more likely than similarly developed states to experience conflicts or civil wars during the past 25 years Nor did they report higher rates of deaths in wars or guerrilla violence And although the Ukrainian conflict is too recent to be included in these calculations it is unlikely to significantly alter these results unless the hostilities there spiral out of control Behind these data stands the region’s dramatic demilitarization: whereas the Soviet Union’s defense expenditure once reached 25 percent of GDP the former Warsaw Pact states managed to shed one million troops Inflation and unemployment are two other cases in point most of the postcommunist countries suffered years of rising prices and joblessness inflation had stabilized almost everywhere; the median inflation rate in the postcommunist economies actually dropped below the global median And although unemployment remains several percentage points higher in the transition countries than in comparable states it has declined since its peak level around 2000 Recent years have also seen improvements in another area in which the postcommunist states have trailed the rest of the world: their citizens’ happiness According to the latest round of the World Values Survey 81 percent of people polled in the postcommunist countries reported being either “very” or “quite” happy these countries are no longer particularly depressed -- even though their residents do express unusual dissatisfaction with their jobs have fallen substantially since the end of communism This study of averages obscures the vast variation that has emerged since the demise of Moscow-imposed uniformity the contrast between diverse postcommunist states is striking Poland has blossomed into a free-market democracy whose income has more than doubled since 1990; Tajikistan remains a war-scarred and overwhelmingly poor dictatorship headed by the same leader for more than 20 years One recurring explanation for the divergence of economic outcomes is that in some countries officials undermined performance by pursuing reforms too aggressively more methodical approach enabled other countries to accomplish more successful transitions “Gradualist policies lead to less pain in the short run and faster growth in the long [run],” the economist Joseph Stiglitz argued in his 2002 book Globalization and Its Discontents “In the race between the tortoise and the hare it appears that the tortoise has won again.” This explanation appealed to those in the former Soviet bloc who saw their privileges threatened by liberalization and to those in the West who distrusted market forces countries that had embraced reforms wholeheartedly were outperforming those that had delayed them A simple look at the data supports this conclusion we drew on indicators developed by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development adjusting them to assign each country an annual score between zero and 100 based on how closely it resembled a free-market economy We labeled those that rose more than 40 points in their first three years of transition “radical reformers.” Nine states met this benchmark: the Czech Republic We called countries whose scores rose by 25 to 40 points “gradual reformers,” and those with a rise of less than 25 points “slow reformers.”  Comparing the economic performance of these three groups reveals that quicker and more thorough reforms entailed less many countries in the radical group did experience a slightly greater fall in output than the gradual reformers did slow reformers fared the worst and continue to trail behind the other two groups today The gradual reformers eventually caught up to the radical reformers but not before suffering many years of costly underperformance Compared with those countries that eagerly embraced free markets the gradualists took longer to recover their previous levels of household consumption and to stabilize inflation And insofar as one can tell from the available statistics harder than the rest of the transition states there is no evidence that a gradual approach reduced the pain of transition All signs point in the opposite direction: it was the hares Many of the tortoises eventually caught up another striking pattern leaps out from any map of the region Old predictions that all the transition countries would come to resemble Western states never panned out but toward a different target: their neighbors the postcommunist states have become more like the noncommunist countries nearest their borders The Baltic states have drawn closer to Finland and the Caucasus countries have moved toward Iran and Turkey The Central Asian states have grown more similar to Afghanistan and Iran The central European countries have approached Austria and Germany but with the occasional tug from neighbors to their east There are a few exceptions to this pattern -- most notably Belarus which has become far more authoritarian than nearby noncommunist states The characteristics of each state’s nearest noncommunist neighbors in 1990 offer powerful hints about how that state would evolve thereafter Taking into account the starting point of every country and economically liberal its noncommunist neighbors were and economically liberal it would ultimately become This convergence manifested itself in more subtle ways as well -- for instance neighbors directly influenced the countries’ development prospects as when Islamist militants attacked Tajikistan from across the Afghan border or when German companies set up manufacturing plants in the Czech Republic But a more important driver of convergence was probably underlying cultural features that predated both communism and current national boundaries we argued in this magazine that Russia had become “a normal country,” whose economic and political flaws mirrored those of other states at similar levels of development We speculated that its growth would continue This prediction came true: Russia’s GDP per capita has increased another 39 percent since 2004 and its Internet penetration has quadrupled The first posited “increased democratic competition and the emergence of a more vigorous civil society.” The second foresaw a “slide toward an authoritarian regime that [would] be managed by security-service professionals under the fig leaf of formal democratic procedures.” Our guess was that Russia would chart a course lying somewhere between those two extremes -- a conjecture that turned out to be far too optimistic Russia’s president chose the second option Putin’s authoritarian turn clearly makes Russia more dangerous on a plot of different states’ Polity scores against their incomes Russia still deviates only slightly from the overall pattern For a country with Russia’s national income the predicted Polity score in 2013 was 76 on the 100-point scale If Russia grows even richer without liberalizing politically Only three groups of countries are wealthier than it is today: developed democracies oil-rich dictatorships (mostly in the Persian Gulf) and commercial city-states such as Singapore and Macao Russia obviously cannot become a city-state and it does not possess enough natural resources to become an Arabian-style dictatorship (Its annual income from oil and gas amounts to about $3,000 per citizen compared with $34,000 for Kuwait.) So it will apparently have to choose between experiencing stagnation and pursuing economic development in tandem with greater democratization the Kremlin seems committed to the first option but its preferences could change with time Yet Russia’s growing authoritarianism should not distract from the remarkable progress in the postcommunist region as a whole the countries of the Eastern bloc represented an alternative civilization To imagine them quickly converging with the global mainstream required a certain chutzpah The transition has had its disappointments the changes since 1989 have been an outstanding success It is time to rethink the misperception of this period and struggles against corruption did not fail The claim that a gradual path of economic reform would have been more effective and less painful is contradicted by the evidence The postcommunist transition does not reveal the inadequacy of liberal capitalism or the dysfunctions of democracy it demonstrates the superiority and continuing promise of both Note: Full sources and data for this essay are available here Subscribe to Foreign Affairs to get unlimited access Already a subscriber? Sign In David Miliband Dany Bahar Ruchir Sharma Samuel Charap Nargis Kassenova Melinda Haring Ivo H. Daalder and James M. Lindsay Tong Zhao Zongyuan Zoe Liu Anne Neuberger Liana Fix and Michael Kimmage * Note that when you provide your email address, the Foreign Affairs Privacy Policy and Terms of Use will apply to your newsletter subscription Published by The Council on Foreign Relations Privacy Policy Terms of Use From the publishers of  Foreign Affairs This website uses cookies to improve your experience You can opt-out of certain cookies using the cookie management page * Note that when you provide your email address, the Foreign Affairs Privacy Policy and Terms of Use will apply to your newsletter subscription This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks The action you just performed triggered the security solution There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page Plebiscites pare down complex issues to binary choice but in times of flux they serve political ambition and please the disaffected voter The problems with referendums are well known: they reduce often complex questions to a binary choice; they are a demagogue’s dream distort realities and appeal to emotions; voters can see them as a chance to voice their unhappiness about something else entirely Read moreAs often as not referendums do not produce the result the politicians intend. So what explains their popularity? A sharp increase in referendums is typical in periods of change and political uncertainty, according to Matt Qvortrup, professor of applied political science at Coventry University and author of Referendums Around the World. He estimates that, from roughly 10 a year worldwide in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, the rate is now “approaching 50 a year”. Referendums were much in vogue after the French and Russian revolutions, in the aftermath of the second world war, and after the fall of communism, he said: “We see referendums when the political party system is in flux, when politicians feel unsure of who their supporters are and what they think.” For politicians a referendum is “a way of kicking an issue into the grass”, a fairly safe means of resolving a problem that, in an election, might prove a major vote loser. Read moreA lost referendum is rarely fatal. Before David Cameron stepped down in the wake of the UK’s Brexit vote, the last European prime minister to resign after ending up on the wrong side of a plebiscite was in Norway, in 1972. From the 70s to the 90s, Qvortrup said, politicians largely felt confident about who was voting for them and why. Large, mainstream parties of the centre left and right dominated the political scene and most voters trusted them to make decisions. In many countries that is no longer so; politics are becoming increasingly fragmented, and voters sceptical and disaffected. Research by Sören Holmberg, a Swedish academic, had shown that voters in the 1970s agreed with up to 90% of their chosen party’s platform, Qvortrup said, whereas today that figure was 60%. Moreover, referendums are often confidence votes and statistics show the longer a party has been in power the less support it can expect in a plebiscite. Most voters do not want too much of a good thing. Having “hired” politicians in much the same way as they hire an estate agency, Qvortrup suggested, the public expects their houses to be sold for them at the right price, without being constantly quizzed about the details. Read moreBut the recent return of the referendum may also fit with a move away from the “package deal” were now more individualist than before: “We expect to be able to compile our own playlists All these factors help explain the disruptive votes in several recent referendums: in Britain and Colombia where although those who did vote overwhelmingly supported the government not enough voters turned out to make the referendum valid “irreversible decisions that will really impact people’s lives” and be held only in rare and exceptional circumstances present their really significant policies at elections and accept the outcome as a mandate or a rejection Referendums were “kind of the chicken option” it started planning the renovation of the Rákospalota – Újpest – Veresegyház – Vác railway line 71 and the complete renovation and modernization of the Rákospalota – Újpest station is part of this investment Dávid Vitézy said in his Facebook post today Narrow and outdated platforms (source: Dávid Vizézy / Facebook) Based on the Budapest Agglomeration Railway Strategy the future image of the track has been finalized in recent months with the railway designer commissioned by BFK and two trains will receive the trains in Vác and Veresegyháza in the future were asked to make conceptual proposals for the new Rákospalota – Újpest station The plans were agreed yesterday with the 4th and the 15th district chief architects and the professional staff of the Metropolitan local council They will continue to work on incorporating their opinions and will shortly select directions for further planning commercial functions in addition to the railway with a wide-ranging system of connections between the two areas (source: Dávid Vitézy / Facebook) What is certain is Rákospalota - In Újpest today's narrow platforms will be replaced by spacious Access to the platforms will be completely unobstructed and the historic station building will be preserved and renovated they will have a northern exit around today's station building their southern end will be closer to the overpass on Árpád road where a pedestrian and bicycle underpass would connect Újpest with Rákospalota Public areas along the railway will be renovated new B + R bicycle storages and possibly a P + R car park will be built although this has not yet been agreed with the local councils Dávid Vitézy emphasized that the ideas will be added to the plans prepared by BKK for the northern extension of the M3 metro The goal set in the Budapest Agglomeration Railway Strategy is that 8-10 trains depart from Rákospalota - Újpest to  Nyugati every hour following the development of lines 70 and 71 the railway can play an important role in the transport of Budapest and in the downtown connection system of the parts of the city around the station © 2025 Látóhatár Kiadó Lap-és Könyvkiadó Kft