Bitter Harvest, a historical ethnographic study, examines the property changes prompted by the early post-socialist neoliberal reforms designed to build capitalism in Poland. Historically, the book traces the halting but steady emergence of privatization and liberalization, even under socialism, and how these anticipated the reforms of the post-socialist period. Contrary to the view that the 1989 post-socialist policy represented a radical departure from former state socialist policies via the importation of Western "shock therapy" reforms, including the key economic institution of private...