Tourists throng the centre of Tallinn, in Estonia.
New cars jam the streets of Warsaw.
Eight years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and six since the collapse of the Soviet Union, most of the region's economies are growing smartly. Perhaps too smartly. Mexico learned that lesson in December 1994, when the crash of its peso threw the economy into a deep depression. Now several East European countries look as if they are heading in the same direction. Crises are not inevitable.