Innovations and Entrepreneurs in Socialist and Post-Socialist Societies

This volume is composed of interviews with entrepreneurs from Bulgaria, Estonia, Macedonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Russian Karelia, and reveals both unique patterns and striking similarities in entrepreneurial activities during the administrative economy of socialism and the period of post-socialism. The book challenges simultaneously the common way of conceptualizing entrepreneurship, the commonly held belief that there were no entrepreneurs under socialism, and the commonly held idea of post-socialism as an antidote to socialist order. The stories of start-up entrepreneurs of the post-socialist transition also challenge some of the key neo-liberal principles. The book is theoretically inspired by the recent studies of economic historians, critical reading of the classical ideas of Joseph Schumpeter on innovations in non-market economies, and the original model of the communist ‘Sacred and Profane’, developed by Markku Kivinen.