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Comecon

The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Russian: Сове́т Экономи́ческой Взаимопо́мощи, tr. Sovét Ekonomícheskoy Vzaimopómoshchi, СЭВ; English abbreviation COMECON, CMEA, CEMA, or CAME) was an economic organization from 1949 to 1991 under the leadership of the Soviet Union that comprised the countries of the Eastern Bloc along with a number of socialist states elsewhere in the world.[1]

Not to be confused with Comic book convention.

Council for Mutual Economic Assistance
Совет Экономической Взаимопомощи
Sovét Ekonomícheskoy Vzaimopómoshchi (BGN/PCGN Russian)
Sovet Ekonomičeskoj Vzaimopomošči (GOST Russian)

Moscow, Soviet Union

10 languages

Economic union

See list

Cold War

5–8 January 1949

28 June 1991

26 December 1991

23,422,281 km2 (9,043,393 sq mi)

25,400,231 km2 (9,807,084 sq mi)

504 million

10 currencies

right

The descriptive term was often applied to all multilateral activities involving members of the organization, rather than being restricted to the direct functions of Comecon and its organs.[2] This usage was sometimes extended as well to bilateral relations among members because in the system of communist international economic relations, multilateral accords – typically of a general nature – tended to be implemented through a set of more detailed, bilateral agreements.[3]


Comecon was the Eastern Bloc's response to the formation in Western Europe of the Marshall Plan and the OEEC, which later became the OECD.[3]

Membership[edit]

Full members[edit]

Albania had stopped participating in Comecon activities in 1961 following the Soviet–Albanian split, but formally withdrew in 1987. East Germany reunified with the West and withdrew from Comecon on 2 October 1990.

The Charter (1959) stated that "the sovereign equality of all members" was fundamental to the organization and procedures of Comecon.[18]

[3]

The Comprehensive Program further emphasized that the processes of integration of members' economies were "completely voluntary and do not involve the creation of supranational bodies." Hence under the provisions of the Charter, each country had the right to equal representation and one vote in all organs of Comecon, regardless of the country's economic size or the size of its contribution to Comecon's budget.

[3]

From 1967, the "interestedness" provisions of the Charter reinforced the principle of "sovereign equality." Comecon's recommendations and decisions could be adopted only upon agreement among the interested members, and each had the right to declare its "interest" in any matter under consideration.[23]

[3]

Furthermore, in the words of the Charter (as revised in 1967), "recommendations and decisions shall not apply to countries that have declared that they have no interest in a particular matter."[23]

[3]

Although Comecon recognized the principle of unanimity, from 1967 disinterested parties did not have a veto but rather the right to abstain from participation. A declaration of disinterest could not block a project unless the disinterested party's participation was vital. Otherwise, the Charter implied that the interested parties could proceed without the abstaining member, affirming that a country that had declared a lack of interest "may subsequently adhere to the recommendations and decisions adopted by the remaining members of the Council." However, a member country could also declare an "interest" and exercise a veto.[23]

[3]

Comecon was an interstate organization through which members attempted to coordinate economic activities of mutual interest and to develop multilateral economic, scientific, and technical cooperation:[3]


Over the years of its functioning, Comecon acted more as an instrument of mutual economic assistance than a means of economic integration, with multilateralism as an unachievable goal.[48] J.F. Brown, a British historian of Eastern Europe, cited Vladimir Sobell, a Czech-born economist, for the view that Comecon was an "international protection system" rather than an "international trade system", in contrast with the EEC, which was essentially the latter.[49] Whereas the latter was interested in production efficiency and in allocation via market prices, the former was interested in bilateral aid to fulfill central planning goals.[49] Writing in 1988, Brown stated that many people in both the West and the East had assumed that a trade and efficiency approach was what Comecon was meant to pursue, which might make it an international trade system more like the EEC, and that some economists in Hungary and Poland had advocated such an approach in the 1970s and 1980s, but that "it would need a transformation of every [Eastern Bloc] economy along Hungarian lines [i.e., only partly centrally planned] to enable a market-guided Comecon to work. And any change along those lines has been ideologically unacceptable up to now."[49]

Association of Southeast Asian Nations

Bilateral trade

Commonwealth of Independent States

Economy of the Soviet Union

Eurasian Economic Union

European Union

also as Friendship Pipeline also as Comecon Pipeline

Druzhba pipeline

Five-year plans of the Soviet Union

History of the Soviet Union

Non-Aligned Movement

State capitalism

State socialism

Planned economy

Shanghai Cooperation Organisation

Spartakiad

Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America

Visegrád Group

Craiova Group

Warsaw Pact

Public Domain This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the . Country Studies. Federal Research Division.

public domain

Robert Bideleux and Ian Jeffries, A History of Eastern Europe: Crisis and Change, Routledge, 1998.  0-415-16111-8.

ISBN

Brine, Jenny J., ed. Comecon: the rise and fall of an international socialist organization. Vol. 3. Transaction Publishers, 1992.

Crump, Laurien, and Simon Godard. "Reassessing Communist International Organisations: A Comparative Analysis of COMECON and the Warsaw Pact in relation to their Cold War Competitors." Contemporary European History 27.1 (2018): 85–109.

Falk, Flade. Review of Economic Entanglements in East-Central Europe and the Comecon´s Position in the Global Economy (1949-1991)

online at (H-Soz-u-Kult, H-Net Reviews. Jam. 2013)

Godard, Simon. "Only One Way to Be a Communist? How Biographical Trajectories Shaped Internationalism among COMECON Experts." Critique internationale 1 (2015): 69–83.

Comecon: Integration Problems of the Planned Economies, Royal Institute of International Affairs/ Oxford University Press, 1967. ISBN 0-192-14956-3

Michael Kaser

Lányi, Kamilla. "The collapse of the COMECON market." Russian & East European Finance and Trade 29.1 (1993): 68–86.

online

Libbey, James. "CoCom, Comecon, and the Economic Cold War." Russian History 37.2 (2010): 133–152.

Radisch, Erik. "The Struggle of the Soviet Conception of Comecon, 1953–1975." Comparativ 27.5-6 (2017): 26–47.

Zwass, Adam. "The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance: The Thorny Path from Political to Economic Integration", M.E. Sharpe, Armonk, NY 1989.

Faudot, Adrien, Tsvetelina Marinova and Nikolay Nenovsky. " Comecon Monetary Mechanisms. A history of socialist monetary integration (1949–1991)", MPRA 2022.

Comecon Monetary Mechanisms. A history of socialist monetary integration (1949–1991)

Germany (East) Country Study (), Data as of July 1987, Appendix B: The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, Library of Congress Call Number DD280.6 .E22 1988.

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