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The Ukraine has achieved independence from Russia despite pressure from the US to remain part of the Soviet Union. Pres Leonid Kravchuk has made certain that the Commonwealth of Independent States has no authority and has gained the loyalty of the Soviet soldiers on its territory. The economic performance of the Ukraine is important as if successful it will be an example to other former Soviet states, but if it fails will cause dangerous instablilty in the region.

The situation in the various countries of eastern Europe is investigated in individual articles. Privatisation is proving difficult for eastern European countries because a large number of their state-owned industries are not viable and contain outdated equipment. Nevertheless many western companies have acquired Eastern enterprises and made them profitable. There are also programmes to help with the process such as the UK's Know-how Fund. In Czechoslovakia, the government plans to issue cupons which entitle the bearer to acquire shares in 1,700 state-owned enterprises.

Byline: CHRYSTIA FREELAND Toronto -- As the United States gears up for a political brawl over immigration next year, one of the concerns shaping the debate will be the fear [...]

Byline: CHRYSTIA FREELAND Last week, Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin, said he could take Kiev in two weeks. This week, he disavowed a cease-fire, then proposed a peace plan. These [...]

KIEV, Ukraine -- OVER the past two weeks, residents of Kiev have lived through its bloodiest conflict since the Second World War, watched their reviled president flee and a new, [...]

Byline: CHRYSTIA FREELAND KIEV, Ukraine -- Over the past two weeks, residents of Kiev have lived through its bloodiest conflict since the Second World War, watched their reviled president flee [...]

Byline: CHRYSTIA FREELAND TORONTO -- 2013 was the year we turned on the plutocrats. Everyone from Pope Francis to Bill de Blasio, the newly elected mayor of New York, has [...]

Last year, we turned on the plutocrats. Everyone from Pope Francis to Bill de Blasio denounced them. Even Bill and Hillary Clinton, erstwhile champions of pro-business centrism and donor sleepovers [...]

WHEN Soviet communism collapsed, the West's declarations of triumph were so full of hubris that it was easy to forget what was right about them. The Ukrainians protesting in downtown [...]

Byline: CHRYSTIA FREELAND When Soviet communism collapsed, the West's declarations of triumph were so full of hubris that it was easy to forget what was right about them. The Ukrainians [...]

TORONTO -- HERE'S the puzzle of America today: the plutocrats have never been richer, and their economic power continues to grow, but the populists, the wilder the better, are taking […]

NEW YORK -- When the financial crisis threatened to topple the global economy, my Russian friends took great delight in calling me from Moscow and sharing the bittersweet response that [...]

NEW YORK -- If you are worried about the Western middle class -- and we all should be -- you may have started to have some doubts about the virtues [...]

EDINBURGH -- Here's one sign the global elite is starting to get worried that capitalism isn't working for the Western middle class. At the TED Global gathering in Scotland's elegant [...]

NEW YORK -- The past week has been a lesson in the perils and the apparent inevitability of overreach. The most eye-catching example has been in Turkey, where what began [...]

NEW YORK -- The past week has underscored one more way in which the lives of the super-rich are diverging from the lives of everyone else: The middle-class is becoming [...]

SAN JOSE, California -- One of the most urgent questions in economics today is the connection between inequality and growth. That is because one of the big economic facts of [...]

NEW YORK -- In recent months, people and their politicians around the world have been astonished to learn that big companies and billionaires will go to extraordinary lengths to pay [...]

NEW YORK -- It's evening in America. That is the worrying news from the latest Heartland Monitor Poll, conducted quarterly and sponsored by the insurer Allstate and National Journal. The [...]

NEW YORK -- Pity Barack Obama. Everything in his life experience prepared him to be the president who would take on the big challenge of the 21st century: rising income [...]

NEW YORK -- If you read just one book this spring to understand how the world is changing, it should be Mohsin Hamid's new novel, ''How to Get Filthy Rich [...]

NEW YORK -- The one thing pretty much all of us in the United States agree on is the importance of equal opportunity. Opinion is divided about the significance of [...]

NEW YORK -- Here's a novel way to address the problems caused by rising income inequality: give children the vote. One virtue of this iconoclastic idea, recently advanced by the [...]

MIAMI -- Louis D. Brandeis, the American jurist, famously warned: ''We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have [...]

NEW YORK -- One way to divide people is into foxes and hedgehogs. Another is into those who think this time is different and those who believe there is never [...]

WASHINGTON -- Watch out Wall Street and look sharp City of London -- one of the sheriffs of global capitalism is riding into town. An elegant Frenchwoman with a shiny [...]

SAN DIEGO -- This is a tough time for experts. Empowered by the Internet and embittered by the sour economy, many people doubt the wisdom of expert elites. Journalism sometimes [...]