Пределы кооперации: координация пятилетних планов стран СЭВ и проблема дефицита сырья (1950–1970-е годы)

Социология науки и технологий. 2023. Т. 14. № 1. С. 32–50.

Popov A., Трушникова С. А.

For a long time, CMEA was perceived through comparison with EEC. However, new modern researches revise the “passiveness” of the Comecon. They show how in this organization some ideas of European integration were canceled and rethought. Coordination of national economic plans was suggested as an alternative that could help to avoid supranational regulation in CMEA. It should have helped to solve the problem of shortage of raw materials. This article argues that the lack of motivation in East European countries-participants was not the reason for the failure of coordination plans. There were economic motives in the socialist integration. The research based is on the archive documents that connected with Comecon from the Russian State Archive of Economics. It also used transcripts of meetings of leaders of communist parties from the funds of the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History and documents of the Committee for Cooperation with Foreign Countries of the Polish People’s Republic of the Archive of New Records. The case about coordination plans was examined through analyzing discussions around CMEA reform projects in the 1950s — 1970s. The authors concluded that many actors make proposals for transformation of Comecon. Some even had suggestions that were similar to the idea of supranational. However, they couldn’t be realized because of the ideological position of socialist countries to protect national interests. When the commodity crisis was starting to low, the motivation of the leadership of the socialist countries in making big reforms also slowly disappeared. Nevertheless, the coordination plans were the battlefield for the trajectory of development of integration within the socialist camp until the 1970s.in

Keywords: советская экономика, социалистические страны, central european integration, Economic Hisotry of USSR, Socialist cooperation, История внешней политики СССР

Publication based on the results of: Soviet Social, Political and Cultural Practices in Transnational Context (2022)