Abstract
History is important in order to understand the trade-related issues that confronted the Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) immediately after 1989 as well as the past and current standing of their trade relations with the world outside the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA), a body that governed trade relations between the countries of Central and Eastern Europe before 1989. This chapter discusses the CEECs’ international economic relations before 1989 by explaining the state monopoly and the planning of foreign trade, the inconvertibility of the currencies under the auspices of the CMEA.
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Notes
- 1.
Central and Eastern European countries converted into Soviet-controlled satellite states: Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland and Romania.
- 2.
Although the Soviet Constitution in principle gave these republics considerable leeway to run their own affairs, in practice, before 1991, all important decisions were made in Moscow. After a left-wing coup failed in August 1991, however, the central authority collapsed and the republics became sovereign states, free to issue their own currencies and raise their own taxes.
- 3.
There was a technical distinction between the ordinary rubbles and the ‘transferable rubbles’ used to settle accounts among the CMEA countries. The latter were mere accounting units that could not be converted into any circulating currency, not even ordinary rubbles.
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Voicu, A.M., Sen, S., Martinez-Zarzoso, I. (2018). Central and Eastern Europe: A Brief History of Trade between 1945–1989. In: Trade, Development and Structural Change. Studies in Economic Transition. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-59005-6_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-59005-6_2
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