Samir Amin and Eastern Europe

SUMMARY

This debate discusses four aspects of Samir Amin’s thoughts regarding Eastern Europe: Amin’s overall evaluation of the Soviet bloc; the relevance of his concepts on the centrality of the periphery; the ‘long transition to socialism’; and the role of nationalism and Eurocentrism in Eastern Europe. The author concludes that Eastern Europe does not fit into the historical role of the periphery as understood by Amin, and that the Eurocentric nationalism of the region serves to promote global capitalism instead of helping to further the anti-capitalist struggle.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the blinded peer reviewers for their thorough criticisms and suggestions and to Jörg Wiegratz and Clare Smedley for their dedicated work that helped to improve this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Annamária Artner

Annamária Artner is a political economist, a senior research fellow at the Institute of World Economics of the Centre for Economic and Regional Studies (ELKH), and a college professor at Milton Friedman University, Budapest. Her main research interests are labour markets, the world system, global capital accumulation and crises.