Europe's big gamble: this month, ten countries--eight from the old Soviet bloc--join the European Union. Longtime members are betting that an expanded Europe will rival the U.S. as an economic superpower. But the newest EU citizens have more pressing concerns. A report from the road.(In Focus)

Stanislaw Nowak wasn't much of a communist. In the 1980s Nowak, a young fruit grower in the hilly Matopolska region of southern Poland, was unhappy with the price that the state-run collective was paying for apples, pears, and plums. But while other farmers were grumbling like good Polish communists, Nowak was cramming two tons of fruit into his one-ton truck and setting out over bad roads to distant cities--Warsaw, Poznan, Gdansk--to sell on the black market.

He traveled alone, squeezed in between bushel baskets with barely enough room to turn the steering wheel. If the police ...

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.