The only ones to have travelled freely - mostly without the required travel documents - were the criminals. Crime is international. It involves massive, intricate and sophisticated operations of export and import, knowledge of languages, extensive and frequent trips, an intimate acquaintance with world prices, the international financial system, demand and supply in various markets, frequent business negotiations with foreigners and so on. This list would fit any modern businessman as well. Criminals are international businessmen. Their connections abroad coupled with their connections with the various elites inside their country and coupled with their financial prowess - made them the first and only true businessmen of the economies in transition. There simply was no one else qualified to fulfil this role - and the criminals stepped in willingly.
They planned and timed their moves as they always do: with shrewdness, an uncanny knowledge of human psychology and relentless cruelty. There was no one to oppose them - and so they won the day. It will take one or more generations to get rid of them and to replace them by a more civilized breed of entrepreneurs. But it will not happen overnight.
In the 19th century, the then expanding USA went through the same process. Robber barons seized economic opportunities in the Wild East and in the Wild West and really everywhere else. Morgan, Rockefeller, Pullman, Vanderbilt - the most ennobled families of latter day America originated with these rascals. But there is one important difference between the USA at that time and Central and Eastern Europe today. A civic culture with civic values and an aspiration to, ultimately, create a civic society permeated the popular as well as the high-brow culture of America. Criminality was regarded as a shameful stepping stone on the way to an orderly society of learned, civilized, law-abiding citizens. This cannot be said about Russia, for instance. The criminal there is, if anything, admired and emulated. The language of business in countries in transition is suffused with the criminal parlance of violence. The next generation is encouraged to behave similarly because no clear (not to mention well embedded) alternative is propounded. There is no - and never was - a civic tradition in these countries, a Bill of Rights, a veritable Constitution, a modicum of self rule, a true abolition of classes and nomenclatures.
The future is grim because the past was grim. Used to being governed by capricious, paranoiac, criminal tyrants - these nations know no better. The current criminal class seems to them to be a natural continuation and extension of generations-long trends. That some criminals are members of the new political, financial and industrial elites (and vice versa) - surprises them not.
In most countries in transition, the elites (the political- managerial complex) make use of the state and its simulacrum institutions in close symbiosis with the criminal underworld. The state is often an oppressive mechanism deployed in order to control the populace and manipulate it. Politicians allocate assets, resources, rights, and licences to themselves, and to their families and cronies. Patronage extends to collaborating criminals.
Additionally, the sovereign state is regarded as a means to extract foreign aid and credits from donors, multilaterals, and NGOs.
The criminal underworld exploits the politicians.
Politicians give criminals access to state owned assets and resources. These are an integral part of the money laundering cycle. "Dirty" money is legitimized through the purchase of businesses and real estate from the state.
Politicians induce state institutions to turn a blind eye to the criminal activities of their collaborators and ensure lenient law enforcement. They also help criminals eliminate internal and external competition in their territories.
In return, criminals serve as the "long and anonymous arm" of politicians. They obtain illicit goods for them and provide them with illegal services. Corruption often flows through criminal channels or via the mediation and conduit of delinquents. Within the shared sphere of the informal economy, assets are often shifted among these economic players. Both have an interest to maintain a certain lack of transparency, a bureaucracy (=dependence on state institutions and state employees) and NAIRU (Non Abating Internal Recruitment Unemployment).