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Intra-CMEA Relations and Domestic Reforms: Some Interactions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 August 2016

Marie Lavigne
Marie Lavigne*
Affiliation:
Université de Paris I
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Summary

Along with the domestic economic reforms going on in the Eastern European countries and in the USSR, a reform of the socialist economic integration framework, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) has been on the agenda for already many years. It has proved impossible to achieve integration through plan coordination. A unified socialist market has been contemplated since 1988. But after the Eastern European “revolution” of 1989 the prerequisites for such a market are politically not feasible. Prom the economic point of view, the domestic bases of market-type economic relations within the CMEA region are not yet created. Yet, it is argued, there is a need for some organization of these relations, as integration within Western Europe cannot be the solution.

Résumé

Résumé

En même temps qu'étaient mises en œuvre des réformes économiques en URSS et en Europe de l'Est, une réforme du mécanisme même de l'intégration socialiste, c'est a dire du CAEM (Conseil d'Assistance Economique Mutuelle), était en discussion depuis plusieurs années. Il est apparu impossible de perfectionner l'intégration par le plan. Aussi bien, un marché unifié de l'Est est envisagé depuis 1988. Mais la révolution intervenue en 1989 en Europe de l'Est ne permet plus politiquement de mettre en place les bases d'un tel mécanisme, et les conditions économiques n'en sont pas réunies du fait de l'inachèvement des réformes. L'article suggère qu'une organisation praticable des relations entre les pays de l'Est est néanmoins nécessaire, car l'intégration de ces pays au sein de l'Europe occidentale n'est pas la solution.

Keywords

423052124423052124
Type
Research Article
Information
Recherches Économiques de Louvain/ Louvain Economic Review , Volume 56 , Issue 2: Economic Change in the East , 1990 , pp. 147 - 168
Copyright
Copyright © Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de recherches économiques et sociales 1990 

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Footnotes

*

This article draws on a paper presented at an international conference on “Socialist International Relations: Change and Continuity” organised by the Institute of Social Sciences, Seoul National University, and held in Seoul (Korea), August 24–26, 1988. It also uses the author's more recent work on the subject; most of this was carried out during a research stay at the BIOST (Bundesinstitut für ostwissenschaftliche und internationale Studien), Cologne (FRG) on the basis of a fellowship extended by the Volkswagen Foundation whose help is gratefully acknowledged. In addition to the literature on CMEA, the author relies on personal expertise and contacts, such as interviews with the Secretary General of the CMEA, V. Sychev, in 1986,1988 and 1989, and with the Director of the International Institute on Economic Problems of the World Socialist System, the late Iu. Shiriaev, in 1988 and 1989.

References

References

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