Going to Market in Bulgaria: Uphill on a Knife Edge
Before going to Bulgaria in February 1992, I met an economist who, as head of an American advisory team, helped write a report to the country's first post-Communist government. His greeting was disarmingly simple: "I'm glad we have a chance to meet. We've got to be certain that we're all telling them the same story." His story, of course, was based upon the now familiar orthodox blueprint for "marketing" an economy: immediate privatization and the removal of price and wage controls; liberalized tax, banking, and exchange rate policies; and specified legal reforms "to remove impediments to business activity, including activities of foreign investors and foreign trade" [Rahn and Utt 1990, 2-3]. I cite this list of free market palliatives only to indicate the degree of politicalization that has accompanied the Bulgarian economic reforms. Odd as it may seem, some political leaders have come to dismiss the "Rahn Report" as having been tainted dangerously "red" by the Socialist government in power at that time.