Young Entrepreneurs in East?Central Europe and the Former Soviet Union

Summaries This article arises from interviews in 1996 and 1997 with 550 under?30?year?old entrepreneurs in seven former communist countries, three in the Commonwealth of Independent States (Armenia, Georgia and Ukraine) and four in East?Central Europe (Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia). Some distinctive features of small businesses in all the ex?communist countries are noted, and nine inter?related differences between small businesses and their proprietors in the former Soviet Union and East?Central Europe are then identified. On the basis of the evidence presented it is argued that growth alone is likely to result in East?Central Europe's businesses being progressively Westernised, whereas a rather different type of capitalism is the more likely outcome in the former Soviet Union.