The main objective of the workshop was to discuss the dynamic economic developments of the 1960s to 1980s towards a liberalisation of international markets and capital flows at a global level from the perspective of small states in Cold War Europe. The organizers of the workshop, ADRIAN BRISKU (Prague/Vienna), MARTIN GUMIELA (Vienna), and LARS FREDRIK STÖCKER (Vienna), hereby framed small states as states that either considered themselves as small in a geographical and/or economic sense and/or were subordinate to a powerful political hegemon. At the same time, small states were not considered as mere objects of hegemonic global players, but as actors in their own rights, who were able to generate strategic benefits for their domestic markets in times of economic changes on a European and global level.

The question of economic nationalist measures of European small states as survival strategies became the main focus of the workshop since the preservation of national interests or nationalist mobilisation are important factors in economic development. The workshop referred on the ongoing conceptual debate on economic nationalism1, which rejects the traditional narrative of economic nationalism as an antipode to economic liberalization, and rather redefines it as a broad spectre of strategic economic policies including both globalizing as well as protectionist measures. Bringing together a group of experts from all over Europe was an opportunity for a fruitful debate on the variety of economic nationalist strategies of small states in Cold War Europe in response to global market liberalization.

In the first panel, ADRIAN BRISKU (Prague/Vienna) focused on processes of “national economy building”. After providing an overview of the historical and current state of research on economic nationalism and giving a convincing definition of small (nation) states, that included performative and perceptive elements, he pointed out still unexplored gaps in that particular field. Adrian Brisku hereby underlined the necessity of going beyond classic protectionism and mercantilism when exploring varieties of economic nationalism. Further, he stated, national economy building should be considered as an analytic category where national motivations and interests play a crucial role. In their research on economic nationalism, scholars should always take intents and contents of such policies into account.

LARS FREDRIK STÖCKER (Vienna) presented the phenomenon of economic nationalism in multinational empires and hereby focused on the example of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic as a “proto-state” within the Soviet Union in times of perestroika. Considering perestroika as an era of “national awakening”, he then discussed Estonia’s economic nationalist measures from the eve of perestroika to Estonia’s sovereignty in a comparative way, taking the Lithuanian and Latvian SSR as the other Baltic “proto-states” into account but also comparing the late Soviet Union with the late Federative Republic of Yugoslavia as a “state of states.” While independent Estonia, for example, opened its market to Western foreign direct investments, Lithuania acted the other way around, using protectionist measures in its economic politics.

The second panel dealt with state responses to post-industrial change. MAXIMILIAN GRAF (Vienna) presented Austria’s “Osthandel” with People’s Poland and the German Democratic Republic as an Austrian example of Keynesian economic measures under Chancellor Bruno Kreisky in order to preserve full employment in Austria’s nationalized steel industry. Fearing a massive national steel crisis, the Austrian government continued its generous lending policy to maintain trade with Poland, even as it became clear that Warsaw would not be able to repay the loans. While Austrian politicians became convinced that there is “no way out of the Austrian way”, this finally led to a “fiasco” of the nationalized steel industry in the mid-1980s.

THOMAS KOLNBERGER (Luxembourg) defined the case of Luxembourg as that of an “archetypical small state”, also focusing on Luxembourg’s self-perception of “thinking big to stay small”. After Luxembourg was unable to ward off the crisis in the domestic steel industry, which was essential for the national welfare system, even with measures such as the "Tripartite" (institutional meetings between industrialists, trade unions and the government), the state was forced to reinvent itself. Thomas Kolnberger then presented post-steel-crisis Luxembourg’s self-rediscovery as a small country that was pursuing “big policy”. As Luxembourg successfully became a global hub in providing expertise for international funds, the presentation showed impressively how a small state could be a global player at the same time.

The third panel provided examples of private-sector quests for state protectionism.
Considering decolonization processes, SANDRA BOTT (Lausanne) showed how anticommunism, economic liberalism and an official policy of non-alignment in Cold War conflicts made the ASEAN countries and, especially, Singapore an attractive economic region for Switzerland’s industry and trade politics. Already in 1967 Switzerland emphasised its importance for a world trade-oriented economy and Swiss diplomacy advised to intensify Switzerland’s relations to Singapore and the other ASEAN countries. This can be exemplified by the negotiations on double taxation and investment protection agreements between both countries. Due to the successful Swiss efforts until the mid-1970s, a period of stable trade growth, capital exports and direct investments followed. In conclusion, these trade relations would not have been feasible without the ASEAN and the Swiss diplomatic agency.

SAARA MATALA (Göteborg) introduced her and CHRISTIAN STUTZ’s (Jyväskylä) paper on state support for the shipbuilding industry in Finland, 1952–2006. The Soviet Union was the key market for the shipbuilding industry in post-war Finland; the exports of the Finnish shipbuilding industry became even part of the Soviet socialist planning. In the end, the export activity of the Finnish shipbuilding industry to the USSR not only secured jobs in the long term. Saara Matala pointed out that this was also a way of preserving Finland's prestigious shipbuilding industry and thus promoting the building of big ships as objects of Finnish national pride and identity.

BO STRÅTH (Helsinki) held the keynote lecture "The Oxymoron: Economic Nationalism and the Global Corporations. Planetary Perspective". He challenged the audience to think about the analogies between different types of nationalism. Stråth then, referring to Keynes, Polanyi or Brubaker for example, gave a historical overview of political and economic nationalism, its definitions, and the changing relationship between the two in the 20th century. He showed how the end of Keynesianism and Fordism in the 1970s simultaneously marked the beginning of a globalisation in which "the planet became the operating area" not for states but for global enterprises. The financial crisis of 2008 then brought a noticeable break in these global trends, which had been ongoing since the 1970s. He concluded by outlining current trends as a result of the 2008 "collapse", such as Trumpism, in which a "capitalist takes the lead in a protest movement against the excesses of capitalism". In the following discussion with the audience, reference was also made to political and theoretical countermovements on economic nationalism. Stråth's keynote lecture as well as the discussion helped to situate the particular presentations in a broader temporal and global context.

Panel Four raised a fruitful debate on Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) across the Iron Curtain. IOANNIS BRIGKOS (Vienna) focused on the Greek military dictatorship (1967 – 1974) and its financial relations with Austria and the German Democratic Republic. He pointed out that the military junta in Greece made no attempt to nationalize its economy and specifically canvassed for foreign investors, promoting the benefits of such investments. This case makes evident how small states pursued their own foreign policies during the Cold War, ignoring numerous ideological boundaries to achieve economic and diplomatic goals. Utilitarian approaches were also observable in the behaviours of Austria, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and their relations with the Greek junta. Since Greece was an important trading partner for Austrian exports, Austria's government therefore tried to create a positive atmosphere for a pro-Greek resolution at a European political level.

MARTIN GUMIELA (Vienna) discussed the approximately 800 Polonia firms – i.e. small private companies, which were found mostly by members of the Polish diaspora in late state-socialist Poland – as an economic nationalist measure of the Polish state. Although People’s Poland would never consider itself small, due to the obvious political and economic dependence on the Soviet Union it fulfilled the definition of a small state. Martin Gumiela presented Polonia firms as an output of growing economic entanglements between the Polish diaspora in the West and People’s Poland. He, hereby, underlined how the regime propagandistically declared an opening for foreign direct investments (FDI) only for members of the Polish diaspora. In practice, however, also non-Polish investors from the West were allowed to found such private firms, which then were widely labelled as “Polonia firms”. Thus, this example is an interesting case of how a state socialist regime used nationalist narratives for legitimizing Western FDI into its domestic economy.

The potential of an actor-centred approach was presented in the fifth panel entitled "Perspective Experts as Drivers of Socialist Globalization" where both presenters dealt with Czechoslovakia’s response to the global economic change in the 1970s and 1980s. BARBORA MENCLOVÁ (Prague) spoke about Czechoslovak experts in Angola and Mozambique as an important example of East-South transfers of knowledge and economic capital during the Cold War. She argued that Angola and Mozambique served as a source for hard currencies, new trade opportunities and the potential access to raw materials for the Czechoslovakian Government. One part of the experts’ salary was paid in U.S. dollars and then was partially remitted to the Czechoslovakian state trade cooperation "Polytechna". Although there was a technology transfer from Czechoslovakia, a strong interest in the extraction of natural resources from Angola and Mozambique prevailed, which revealed practises of neo-colonialism. In the end, numerous hopes on the Czechoslovak side, such as the increasing import of raw materials, did not materialize.

The study of LUBOŠ STUDENÝ (Prague) of the Czechoslovak Forecasting Institute (FI) in the late 1980s created a worthwhile research perspective, as the institute itself represented a central reform measure for the goals of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. There was a plethora of reform concepts that were neither exclusively socialist nor capitalist. Accordingly, a dichotomy should be avoided when doing research on economic reforms in Czechoslovakia. Numerous ideas did not only exist as a strict model but included pluralistic approaches from different ideological directions. Studený examines the difficulties of the FI as an economic think tank, which was trying to deal with an economic crisis and promoting, at the same time, a selective subsidisation of future industries.

Panel Six led us from the Czechoslovakian experts to “Economic Emancipation in Multinational Socialist States“. BENEDETTO ZACCARIA (Padova) focused on republican nationalism in Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). From the mid-1960s onward, a liberal turn in the field of economics was observable in SRFY. However, the decentralisation allowed the Socialist Republics of Slovenia and Croatia to emphasize their local economic characteristics. Croatian and Slovenian managers of state companies and political decision makers wanted to abandon national markets and pushed for transnational regionalism. Zaccaria identified these "nationalist" economic considerations embedded in broader debates on national issues. After all, a gradual process of Yugoslavia's economic integration into the worldwide economy in the 1970s and the lack of federal coordination provided new opportunities for economic manoeuvring of republican “sub-states” or “non-states” against the federal centre.

KEVIN AXE (Berlin) charted how regional self-management moved to economic autonomy in perestroika-era Estonia and analysed contemporary theoretical debates on how this change was envisioned to take place. The very starting point of those changes was an exclusive scientific debate whose ideas were published in 1987 through a proposal on the Self-Managing Economic Programme (IME ¬– which also meant “miracle” in Estonian). The intention of those theoretical ideas, which were supported by a few planners and scholars, was to establish economic autonomy within the Soviet Union. Subsequently, this so-called paper coexisted with a concomitant independence movement and led to widely publicised debate. Overall, the path to economic independence was not always clear, which was also evident in the various duelling working groups within several IME’s intercessors. Neoliberal approaches were absorbed via transnational networks, reinterpreted and re-contextualised with their own national economic ideas.

The closing event of the workshop was a public book launch of the volume “European Socialist Regimes' Fateful Engagement with the West. National Strategies in the Long 1970s”, edited by Federico Romero and Angela Romano, which was held by ANGELA ROMANO (Glasgow). The book is the main outcome of an ERC-Grant and focusses on the elites and the decision-making processes of the Comecon-states in their relations with the West during the “long 1970s”. The nine contributions included individual national case studies and combined multiple approaches, from international to economic and business history perspectives. Against the background of the insights gained during the two-day workshop, Angela Romano's presentation was followed by a fruitful debate on the possibilities of agency of small European states during the late Cold War period, that concluded by revisiting the core themes of the individual contributions and the workshop as a whole.

Conference overview:

Adrian Brisku (Vienna) / Lars Fredrik Stöcker (Vienna) / Martin Gumiela (Vienna): Opening Remarks

Panel 1 – Varieties of Small-State Economic Nationalism
Chair: Martin Gumiela (Vienna)

Adrian Brisku (Prague/Vienna): Economic Nationalism or ‘National Economy-Building’ of Small (Nation-) States

Lars Fredrik Stöcker (Vienna): Becoming ‘Masters of Their Own House’: Economic Nationalism in Multinational Empires

Panel 2 – State Responses to Post-Industrial Change
Chair: Lars Fredrik Stöcker (Vienna)

Maximilian Graf (Vienna): Austrian Osthandel as Economic Nationalism: Reassessing the Role of Foreign Trade in Austro-Keynesianism

Thomas Kolnberger (Luxembourg): No Games Just Business: The Other Economic Nationalism of Luxembourg

Panel 3 – Private-Sector Quests for State Protectionism
Chair: Adrian Brisku (Vienna)

Sandra Bott (Lausanne): Switzerland’s Economic Relations with the Non-Communist Southeast Asia, 1965-1980

Saara Matala (Göteborg) / Christian Stutz (Jyväskylä): International Competition, National Business: State Support for Shipbuilding in Finland, 1952-2006

Keynote Speech
Bo Stråth (Helsinki): The Oxymoron: Economic Nationalism and the global Corporations' Planetary Perspective

Panel 4 – Foreign Direct Investments across the Iron Curtain
Chair: Adrian Brisku (Vienna)

Ioannis Brigkos (Vienna): “Doing Business with the Colonels:” Greece’s Financial Relations with Austria and German Democratic Republic during the Greek Military Dictatorship, 1967-1974

Martin Gumiela (Vienna): National in Content and…Pragmatic in Practice: The Polonia Firms in State-Socialist Poland

Panel 5 – Experts as Drivers of Socialist Globalization
Chair: Martin Gumiela (Vienna)

Barbora Menclová (Prague): Czechoslovakia Expertise in Lusophone Africa after 1975 as a Small State Response to Global Economic Change in the 1970s

Luboš Studený (Prague): Economic Forecasting of the Czechoslovak Forecasting Institute in the late 1980s

Panel 6 – Economic Emancipation in Multinational Socialist States
Chair: Lars Fredrik Stöcker (Vienna)

Benedetto Zaccaria (Padova): Republican Nationalism in Socialist Yugoslavia: The Slovene and Croatian Responses to Globalizing Market Forces in the 1970s

Kevin Axe (Berlin): Late Perestroika Estonian Economic Debate 1987-1991: from Theoretical Self-Management to Independence

Note:
1 See for example: Thomas Fetzer, Beyond ‘economic nationalism’: towards a new research agenda for the study of nationalism in political economy, in: Journal of International Relations and Development 25/1 (2021).