For well over a decade, the 13 countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) encompassed in this regional review have been in a state of transition from socialist central planning to open market economies. Their progress along this arduous path has varied, but all have shared a common beginning as members of the former Soviet [...]

The benefits to the average citizen of the last decade of economic reforms in the CEE countries are as evident in the food industry as anywhere. Central planners had permitted only a limited number of standard bread and pastry types, but now small entrepreneurs, foreign companies and re-energized former state enterprises have combined to offer [...]

One of the world’s great grain belts extends along the Ukrainian and southern Russian steppes, into the black earth zones of central Russia, up and down the Volga River, across the low lying Ural Mountains, and far into western Siberia and northern Kazakhstan. This vast expanse of arable land — covering 4,000 kilometers from east [...]