On December 10, 1994, Russian president Boris Yeltsin ordered Russian armed forces into the Republic of Chechnya. For eight weeks thereafter, the Russian military waged a poorly organized but brutally destructive assault on the Chechen capital of Grozny.

Five years after the dramatic fall of communism in Eastern Europe, there is an opportunity to evaluate the efficacy of different forms of liberalization.

The most obvious and controversial difference between reform strategies is in the pace of transition. Previous theories of development have focused on the slow growth of Third World countries into modern economies. Some experts have ascribed current failures in Eastern Europe to the instantaneous liberalization of economies and the forceful application of tight monetary policies.

But this theory is contradicted by the fact that the most successful Eastern European countries, Poland and the Czech Republic, are those that initiated the most dramatic and rapid reforms. The authors of Economic Transition show how educate, relatively modern societies can make major changes in political and economic institutions almost overnight.

Economic Transition in Eastern Europe and Russia is a work of substantial academic merit that is also accessible to the interested layperson. Thirteen essays by acknowledged economic experts explore the rapid changes in the transition economies of Eastern Europe, with discussions on political and economic freedom, monetary control and privatization, labor markets and social safety nets, and taxation and crime.

After an introduction by the volume editors, the book offers a look at the complex relationship between nationalism and democracy. The authors then examine the special challenges facing democracy in ethnically divided societies.

Starting in the winter of 1991, the project on Industrial Restructuring and the Political

Economy in Russia at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Arms

Control (CISAC) has provided technical assistance to Mashinostroenie, a large aerospace enterprise engaged in research, design, experimental production, and systems integration of a broad variety of space vehicles and equipment. Officially known as NPO Mashinostroenie, the firm is one of the most prestigious enterprises in the Russian military-industrial complex, with world-class, state-of-the-art technology. The enterprise brings together many of the country's best scientists and engineers, along with management systems to execute their ideas.

Since 1992, the CISAC Defense Conversion Project has been working with the Moscowbased Impuls. Impuls is a medium-sized firm with expertise in control microdevices for the military, such as control heads for guided bombs and detection equipment for various weapon systems. Currently Impuls is working aggressively to break into several commercial high-technology markets.

Given the privileged position of the military-industrial complex in the old Soviet order, many have asserted that the military-industrial complex would be most resistant to radical economic reform. As the coddled employees of the Soviet state, we should expect directors and workers of military enterprises as well as their ministerial superiors to fear liberalized prices, commercial markets, and privatization.

The Russian privatization program has been heralded as the crown jewel of Russia's economic reform. While other aspects of Russia's economic reform have been less successful, privatization has continued unimpeded throughout the first two years of economic reform. On paper, Russian privatization appears to be more successful than any other government privatization program in history. By January 1994, 90,000 state enterprises were privatized.

The first of its kind to focus on the concept of world security, this comprehensive collection offers nineteen original essays written by renowned scholars. Now in its third edition, World Security: Challenges for a New Century tackles the most significant challenges to world security in the post-Cold War era, giving a thorough and dynamic introduction to contemporary global issues. Completely revised to address the dramatic changes in the global arena, the third edition features eleven new essays and the addition of new discussion questions after each essay.

During the most recent Russian-American summit in Vancouver, Canada in April 1993, President Clinton announced a major new initiative to assist Russia's transition to a market economy. In discussing how to aid the process of Russia's economic reform in ways of mutual benefit to both the United States and Russia, both President Yeltsin and President Clinton underscored the importance of promoting the conversion and privatization of state enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex.

While most agree that conversion and privatization of these enterprises are laudable goals, few have discussed concrete methods of achieving these ends at the level of individual enterprises. By focusing on the actual experiences of one Russian enterprise that has both converted to almost 100% civilian production and, at the same time, become a private company, this report seeks to expand the discussion of the means and models for achieving conversion and privatization of the Russian military industrial complex.

This report covers work on conversion and privatization in the former Soviet Union that has been conducted over the past two years by the Center for International Security and Arms Control (CISAC) at Stanford University. In it, we explore the process of conversion and privatization through employee ownership. The report contains one chapter each on the major issues surrounding conversion and privatization, followed by a detailed explanation of the employee ownership method of privatization. The report concludes with the description and analysis of a case study of privatization through employee ownership: the Saratov Aviation Plant.

Much has been written already about the changed international system of the 1990s, projecting the configuration of a restructured Europe, the future role of the former Soviet republics and the United States, and the emergence of a multipolar world with or without a dominant hegemon. In the search for new structures and explanations, however, it is too often assumed in error that these apply to what we label the "Third World" in the same way that they do to the "North" or the "West."

This book explores the phenomenon of global transformation in the context of the Third World, looking specifically at the preference for more democratic political systems, the emergence of a new international economic order, and the changing forms of conflict, its mitigation, and its resolution. The authors provide major theoretical analyses of these three trends, as well as in-depth case studies that explore specific developments.