A window on social reality: qualitative methods in poverty research -- From Soviet expectations to post-Soviet realities: poverty during the transition -- Poverty shock: the impact of rapid economic change on the women of the Kyrgyz Republic / Kathleen Kuehnast -- Between civil war and land reform: among the poorest of the poor in Tajikistan / Elizabeth Gomart -- Standing on a knife's edge: doing business in Uzbekistan / Elizabeth Gomart -- When the lights went out: poverty in Armenia / Nora Dudwick -- No way back: social exclusion among the poorest in Armenia / Elizabeth Gomart -- No guests at our table: social fragmentation in Georgia / Nora Dudwick -- "Children have become a luxury:" everyday dilemmas of poverty in Ukraine / Catherine Wanner and Nora Dudwick -- After the return: the struggle of the Crimean Tatars to reintegrate / Elizabeth Gomart -- Eating from one pot: survival strategies in Moldova's collapsing rural economy / Hermine G. De Soto and Nora Dudwick -- Prosperity and despair: Riga and the other Latvia / The Institute of Philosophy and Sociology (Riga), with Nora Dudwick