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CEMA's Influence on Soviet Policies in Eastern Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Robert S. Jaster
Robert S. Jaster
Affiliation:
United States
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Extract

The Council of Economic Mutual Assistance (CEMA) was established by the USSR in 1949 to co-ordinate the economic activities of its newly acquired empire in Eastern Europe. CEMA's true role in intra-Bloc relations has undergone significant changes since the death of Stalin. These changes, and their implications for Soviet foreign and domestic policies, are the subject of speculation in this article.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , April 1962 , pp. 505 - 518
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1962

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References

1 Rostow, W. W., The Dynamics of Soviet Society, New York, 1954, p. 183.Google Scholar

2 Blau, Peter, Bureaucracy in Modern Society, New York, 1956Google Scholar, ch. 5.

3 A main administration is one notch below ministerial level; hence it enjoys no direct representation on the Council of Ministers.

4 Negotiating with the Russians, ed. by Raymond Dennett, Boston, 1951, pp. 272 and 292.

5 Rostow, , op cit., p. 185.Google Scholar

6 CEMA's charter, which entered into force in April 1960, appears in Vneshnyaya Torgovlya (Foreign Trade), No. 9 (1960), and in translation in The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance: Charter and Convention, JPRS 3393, Library of Congress, June 13, 1960. The OEEC statute is contained in A Study of European Economic Regionalism, House Report No. 1226, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Special Study Mission to Europe, Part II, U.S. 86th Congress, January 25, 1960.

7 Morozov, V. I., in Sovietskoye Gosudarstvo i Pravo (Soviet State and Law), No. 10 (1961), p. 150.Google Scholar

8 The “vanguard” role of the CPSU, although reaffirmed by the 81 Communist parties in their Statement of December 6, 1960, has since become a confused issue within the Bloc. Particularly after the Twenty-Second CPSU Congress in late 1961, a wide divergence of opinion appeared among satellite leaders. While the Czechs, for example, reasserted the CPSU's “leading role,” Hungary's Kadar was reported to have said that there is no leading party in the Communist movement and no need for one. See Washington Post, December 3, 1961, p. A22.

9 According to Pravda of December 5, 1961, Molotov did not support the Party's policy of showing “tact and respect for the sovereignty of all nations” but, “juggling with Stalinist formulae,” he “devised a theory which deprived proletarian internationalism of one of its most important elements: the love of each people for their homeland.” This charge was evidently more than a mere fabrication to discredit Molotov further, because identical charges—though less specific—were raised almost three years earlier against the entire Anti-Party group.

10 In Voprosy Ekonomiki (Problems of Economics), No. 5 (1961), it is stated that the companies have been transferred to the full ownership of the countries where they are located.

11 Pravda, October 31, 1956.

12 The new role of CEMA is defined in Vneshnyaya Torgovlya, No. 11 (1959), p. 8. Some of CEMA's more recent activities are discussed in ibid., No. 7 (1961), pp. 11ff., and in Vestnik Statistiki (Journal of Statistics), No. 1 (1960), p. 89. The intra-Bloc multilateral clearing system is described in Pravda, June 25, 1957.

13 The interval of over nine months that separated the fourteenth and fifteenth CEMA plenary sessions probably reflected a decision to settle the Albanian question at an intra-Bloc political conference before CEMA would again convene to discuss intra-Bloc economic matters. Hence the fifteenth plenum met in December 1961 within a few days after the end of the Twenty-Second CPSU Congress.

14 Vneshnyaya Torgovlya, No. 9 (1959), p. 34, and The Sino-Soviet Economic Offen-sive in the Less Developed Countries, Washington, D.C., U. S. State Department, Publication No. 6632, May 1958, p. 19.

15 Medunarodni Problemi (Belgrade), No. 4 (1959), p. 109. The little progress so far made in this direction is outlined in Planovoye Khozaistvo (Planned Economy), No. 8 (1960), p. 46.

16 Voprosy Ekonomiki, No. 3 (1960), p. 33.

17 Tribyuna Lyudu (Warsaw), June 22, 1960.

18 Vneshnyaya Torgovlya, No. 12 (1960), p. 11.

19 Sovietskoye Gosudarstvo i Pravo, No. 10 (1961), p. 149.

20 A Soviet writer, complaining about the circumvention of CEMA proposals for specialization, has charged that “Sometimes a significant number of countries ‘specializes’ in the output of the same identical product … [sometimes] the existing state of production is fixed … in other cases analogous equipment is produced by several countries, but is made to appear different through excessively detailed nomenclature.” See Vneshnyaya Torgovlya, No. 12 (1960), p. 12, and the Polachek interview in Promyshlenno-Ekonomicheskaya Gazetta (Industrial-Economic Gazette), February 7, 1958.

21 New YorK Times, January 19, 1958. Also, in 1957 Poland reduced coal exports to the GDR while maintaining those to the West, counter to the intra-Bloc delivery schedules that had been worked out in CEMA. According to recent charges of the Soviet leadership, Albania “ignored the work of CEMA,” suggesting that Hoxha balked at plans that were directed essentially at making Albania the vintner to the Bloc.

22 Sächsisches Tageblatt (Dresden), June 11, 1961.

23 Sovietskoye Gosudarstvo i Pravo, No. 10 (1961), p. 154.

24 Voprosy Filosofii (Problems of Philosophy), No. 3 (1961), p. 18.

25 For example, the late premier of Hungary, Imre Nagy, charged Soviet leaders with agreeing to supply only 36 per cent of the goods that Hungary wanted to import from the USSR in 1954. See Imre Nagy on Communism, New York, 1957, p. 190.

26 See, for instance, Partiinaya Zhizn (Party Life), No. 20 (1957), p. 74.

27 In his Leipzig speech of March 7, 1959, Khrushchev said: “The economic barriers which divided our [socialist] countries under capitalism will be broken down, one by one. The common economic base of world socialism, which ultimately makes frontiers pointless, will be reinforced.” See International Affairs (Moscow), October 1959, p. 47. Other Soviet officials have spoken of the need for a “common economic plan” for the entire socialist camp. See Voprosy Filosofii, No. 3 (1961), p. 25.

28 Current Soviet Policies, 111, New York, 1960, p. 182.