Economic Entanglements in East-Central Europe and the COMECON’s position in the global economy (1949-1991)

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Economic Entanglements in East-Central Europe and the COMECON’s position in the global economy (1949-1991)

Veranstalter
Projektgruppe “Ostmitteleuropa-Transnational" am Geisteswissenschaftlichen Zentrum für Geschichte und Kultur Ostmitteleuropas Leipzig (GWZO); Fachkommission Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften im J.G. Herder-Forschungsrat; Zentrum für Interdisziplinäre Polenstudien an der Europa-Universität Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder)
Veranstaltungsort
GWZO, 04109 Leipzig, Reichsstr. 4-6, Speck's Hof
Ort
Leipzig
Land
Deutschland
Vom - Bis
14.11.2012 - 16.11.2012
Deadline
13.11.2012
Website
Von
Müller, Uwe

The involvement of further parts of East-Central Europe in the soviet sphere of influence in the wake of WWII had far-reaching consequences for the economic relations both between East-Central European countries themselves and between the region and other parts of the world. The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA/ COMECON), founded in 1949, marked for four decades socialist countries’ space of action both in an economic and geographical sense. Since its dissolution more than 20 years ago the CMEA became a research object in various branches of economic history. The historicisation of research on the CMEA and the progressive opening of new sources created novel perspectives and questions. It therefore deserves consideration that, although the CMEA eventually proved to be a failed effort for a supranational coordination of national planned economies, it was never simply reducible to a free trade zone. Indeed, it initiated and coordinated joint projects in large economic and infrastructural areas. Hence studying the range of bottom-up attempts at cooperation and integration offers new insights in the system and operation of command central planned economies. Despite efforts at autarky both on the level of individual nations and the bloc at large, contacts with neutral and non-aligned states played an important role in CMEA countries’ foreign trade relations as early as in the 1950s and 1960s.. Changing global economic conditions in the 1970s brought about a revision of economic and political strategies in which relations with the “First” and “Third World” earned ever more significance.

Programm

14 November, 2012

4:00-5:00pm
Introduction

Chair: Klaus Ziemer (Trier/Warsaw)
Frank Hadler (Leipzig), Welcome address
Uwe Müller (Leipzig), East Central European Planned Economies in the Global Economy (1945-1990). State and tasks of research

5:00-5:30 pm Coffee break

5:30-7:45 pm
The Comecon. A Transnational Institution which Worked?

Simon Godard (Geneva), Internationalism as a vocation? Considerations on the working culture of CMEA-public servants
Erik Radisch (Bochum), Soviet Concepts of the Comecon (1956-1971)
Jan Lomícek (Prague), Czechoslovak participation in joint projects within the CMEA in the seventies and eighties of 20th century

8:00 pm Reception

15 November, 2012

9:00-10:30 am
Case Studies

Chair: Zdenek Lukas (Vienna)
Pál Germuska (Budapest), A Special Case of Branch-Cooperation. Military Industrial Collaboration in the Comecon
Mila Oiva (Turku), Competition and the Socialist Integration. – Contradictory Concepts?

10:30-11:00 am Coffee Break

11:00 am-12:30 pm
Zsombor Bódy (Budapest), Semantic of Political Economy of the International Relations in the COMECOM. The Example of the Hungarian Ikarus Buses. 1957-1975
Christian Mady (Bochum), Hungarian Foreign Trade Relations in the Automobile Industry

12:30-2:00 pm Lunch

2:00-4:15 pm
Relations between the West and the East

Chair: Karl von Delhaes (Marburg)
Mikhail Lipkin (Moscow), The Perception of West European Integration in the USSR
Angela Romano (London), Defensive and transformative: the European Community's policy towards the Comecon since the early 1970s
Suvi Kansikas (Helsinki), The CMEA and the EC Challenge, 1969-1975

4:15-4:45 pm Coffee break

4:45-6:15 pm
Johan Schot/Jira Janac (Eindhoven), Tensions concerning the Sovietization and the Europeanization of Railway Governance in East Central Europe
Peter Švík (Tartu/Bratislava), Reflections on General Trends in the East-West Trade of Civil Aviation Technology in the 1960s and 1970s

6:30 pm Sitzung der Fachkommission
(nur für Mitglieder)

8:00 pm Dinner

16 November, 2012

9:00–10:30 am
The Comecon in the Global Economy

Chair: Sebastian Kinder (Tübingen)
Christian Gerlach (Bern), Reintegration into the Capitalist World Market? Grain Imports to East Europe in the 1970s and their Implications
Radek Soběhart (Prague), “Long Live General Muammar Gaddafi!” Czechoslovak-Libyan Relations (1974-1985). Reflections on the Global Cold War

10:30-11:00 am Coffee break

11:00-11:45 am
Martin Dangerfield (Wolverhampton), Post-Comecon Economic Relations of Former Soviet Bloc Countries and Russia: Continuities and Changes

11:45 am-12:45 pm Lunch

12:45 pm – 2:15 pm
Conclusions

Chair: Uwe Müller (Leipzig)
Christoph Boyer (Salzburg), Concluding Comments
Dagmara Jajeśniak Quast (Leipzig/Frankfurt-Oder), Closing Remarks: The Multiple International Dimensions of the Comecon. New Interpretations of Old Phenomena.

Kontakt

Uwe Müller

04109 Leipzig, Reichsstr. 4-6, Speck's Hof

0341-9735589

uwe.mueller@uni-leipzig.de

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