The conference was part of the cooperative project “The End of an Era: Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, 1989/91” led by the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on War-Consequences and the Davis Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies at the Harvard University.

The event, co-organised by the ENRS, focused on the economic aspects that led up to the collapse of the entire political system. In the first part of the conference, Soviet economy was discussed: opportunities for saving centrally planned economies and the role of natural resources, as well as social problems caused by economic problems. In the next part of the conference, the economic situation of some of the satellite states (the People's Republic of Poland, People's Republic of Bulgaria, Socialist Republic of Romania, Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, German Democratic Republic and the People's Republic of Hungary) was presented. The last discussion concerned the economic relations between the East and the West and their influence on the fall of Communism.