Professor David Lane is an Emeritus Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge University, UK, and previously was Professor of Sociology at the University of Birmingham. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. He has published widely on state socialist societies, the USSR, Marxism, elites, class and social stratification; his current research focuses on transformation, globalization, ‘varieties of capitalism’, neoliberalism, alternatives to capitalism, the enlargement of the European Union and the formation of the Eurasian Union.