CEE architects of transition: Leszek Balcerowicz

By the time the Berlin Wall came down, Leszek Balcerowicz had already been working on plans to restructure Poland’s ailing socialist economy for more than a decade.

“In 1978, I created an informal group of young economists to work on a blueprint of an improved economic system, which would still respect the geopolitical constraints,” he says. “We wanted to be realistic, because we didn’t assume that the Soviet Union would disappear in our lifetime.