Comecon: Encyclopedia II - Comecon - Characteristics

Comecon - Characteristics

Seat: Moscow

Full Members in the late 1980s: the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), Hungary, Romania, Poland, Cuba, the Mongolian People's Republic (Mongolia), and Vietnam.

Primary documents governing the objectives, organization, and functions:

• the Charter of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (first adopted in 1949 and subsequently amended; all references herein are to the amended 1974 text)
• the Comprehensive Program for the Further Extension and Improvement of Cooperation and the Further Development of Socialist Economic Integration by the Comecon Member Countries, adopted in 1971 (see Comprehensive Program for Socialist Economic Integration)
• the Comprehensive Program for Scientific and Technical Progress up to the Year 2000, adopted in December 1985

The Comecon served for four decades as a framework for cooperation among the planned economies of the Soviet Union, its allies in Central and Eastern Europe, and, later, Soviet allies in the Third World. Over the years, the Comecon system grew steadily in scope and experience. The organization later encompassed a complex and sophisticated set of institutions that represented a striking advance over the capabilities of the organization in the early 1960s.

This institutional evolution reflected changing and expanding goals. Initial, modest objectives of "exchanging experience" and providing "technical assistance" and other forms of "mutual aid" were extended to the development of an integrated set of economies based on a coordinated international pattern of production and investment. These ambitious goals were pursued through a broad spectrum of cooperative measures extending from monetary to technological relations.

At the same time, the extraregional goals of the organization expanded; other countries, both geographically distant and systemically different, were being encouraged to participate in Comecon activities. Parallel efforts sought to develop Comecon as a mechanism through which to coordinate the foreign economic policies of the members as well as their actual relations with non-member countries and such organizations as the EEC and the United Nations.

Asymmetries of size and differences in levels of development among Comecon members deeply affected the institutional character and evolution of the organization. The overwhelming dominance of the Soviet economy necessarily meant that the bulk of intra-Comecon relations took the form of bilateral relations between the Soviet Union and the smaller members of Comecon.

These asymmetries served in other ways to impede progress toward multilateral trade and cooperation within the organization. The sensitivities of the smaller states dictated that the sovereign equality of members remained a basic tenet of the organization. Despite Soviet political and economic dominance, sovereign equality constituted a very real obstacle to the acquisition of supranational powers by Comecon organs. Nevertheless, the 1985 Comprehensive Program for Scientific and Technical Progress up to the Year 2000 took steps to instill some organizations with supranational authority.

The planned nature of the members' economies and the lack of effective market-price mechanisms to facilitate integration further hindered progress toward Comecon goals. Without the automatic workings of market forces, progress had to depend upon conscious acts of policy. This tended to politicize the processes of integration to a greater degree than was the case in market economies.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Characteristics", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki