The collapse of the Berlin Wall has come to represent the entry of an
isolated region onto the global stage. On the contrary, this study argues
that Communist states had in fact long been shapers of an interconnecting
world, with 1989 instead marking a choice by local elites about the form
that globalisation should take. Published to coincide with the thirtieth
anniversary of the 1989 revolutions, this work draws on material from local
archives to international institutions to explore the place of Eastern Europe
in the emergence, since the 1970s, of a new world order that combined
neoliberal economics and liberal democracy with increasingly bordered
civilizational, racial, and religious identities. An original and wide-ranging
history, it explores the importance of the region’s links to the West, East
Asia, Africa, and Latin America in this global transformation, reclaiming
the era’s other visions such as socialist democracy and authoritarian modernization
that had been lost in triumphalist histories of market liberalism.

系统介绍苏东诸国经济社会转轨与思想变迁。
在维持了20年的高速增长后，中国的经济正在走向第三个十年，这时候苏东诸国的经验教训特别值得我们关注。它们过去与我们有着相同的体制，我们的改革也受到过东欧早期改革的启发。但苏东诸国转轨期间的情况到底如何，国内却鲜有系统介绍。
本书作者长期从事苏东研究，他们认为，苏东诸国在转轨期间普遍出现经济衰退是事实，问题在于如何认识和解释这种现象。本书在对中国与东欧改革前经济与社会的不同模式进行实证分析的基础上，重新比较和解释了中国与东欧改革的不同进程。

本书是一个历史学者对"东欧"各国政治经济文化各方面现状的观察与评论。有现象，有分析，对于读者了解目前"新欧洲"的真实情况，颇有助益。分上篇"金融危机后回首看东欧"，中篇"波兰独立之路与南斯拉夫民族独立问题"，下篇"东欧知识分子的精神追求"，共15篇文章。以作者在《经济观察报》开设专栏撰写的文章为基础，修改编订而成，也是之前出版的《十年沧桑--东欧诸国的经济社会转轨与思想变迁》（上海三联2004）一书的姊妹篇。