Word: comecon
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...road strewn with rocks, but they are mere pebbles compared with the boulders faced by Moscow in its efforts to forge its satellites into a Communist common market. Shortly after the European Economic Community began operating in 1958, Russia started a hasty conversion of its shaky eight-nation*COMECON (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance) into a Redhued EEC-only COMECON, of course, was to be much better. There would be no wasteful competition among nations, for example, as in the free-market EEC; instead, each member would be assigned to produce what it could make best. But to Soviet chagrin...
Devious Device. For all its closed-door meetings (no fewer than 61 in the first four months of 1963), COMECON has come to hardly any substantial agreements. Although the COMECON nations and Red China last week agreed on a 40% to 50% cut in air fares within the Red bloc, COMECON has been able to reach agreement on production assignments to members in only a few, uncontroversial cases...
...admission of Outer Mongolia to COMECON, Russia's ineffectual answer to the Common Market, was a slap in the face to the Chinese, who are not members and who had expected to exert a measure of control in Outer Mongolia's affairs. In Laos, Russia infuriated China by promoting a deal, however unsteady, with the U.S. and heralding it as "a major accomplishment." In India, Russia has supported Nehru's border war against Red China, first by providing small arms and helicopters for the swift movement of troops, most recently by offering the Indians supersonic...
Moscow obviously felt that COMECON ought to imitate Western Europe by closer economic integration. It has been tried before. There has been some success in sharing manufacturing tasks (e.g., Poland to specialize in coal-mining and transport equipment; Czechoslovakia in heavy electrical equipment). But most other COMECON integration attempts have failed because the satellites have learned to distrust each other's-and Moscow's-promises. As Gomulka once complained: "Everyone peels his own turnip." Six Competitors. The meatiest turnip is the Common Market. Satellite commerce with Western Europe (most of it with the Six) is the bloc...
...understood why Nikita regarded Bella Italia as male (or the other Common Market partners, for that matter). But natural or not, COMECON was eager to share in the marriage. The meeting's final communique again called for a new, worldwide trade organization to rival the Common Market, but at the same time hoped for increased trade with the West. The message also promised, as Moscow had innumerable times before, that "in the near future" the Communist world will outproduce capitalism both in industry and agriculture...