Word: comecon
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With U.S.-Soviet relations close to rockbottom, the rare COMECON meeting represented Moscow's urgent summons for present and future solidarity from its allies. The motherland needed friends and comfort...
...expensive. Since mid-1980, when Polish workers staged the strikes that led to the creation of Solidarity, the Kremlin has pumped $4 billion into its neighbor, some of it in rubles that can be used only to settle bills within the Soviet-bloc Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon), some of it in hard currencies that can buy goods or pay debts in the West. But the Soviet Union also supplies its allies with oil, natural gas, iron ore, cotton, timber and other commodities, all at prices below those prevailing on world markets. In exchange, the Kremlin buys Czech shoes...
...countries began borrowing heavily from the West, mostly to build new factories that were supposed to boost economic performance. Not all of these modernization plans failed as spectacularly as Poland's, but there were shortcomings everywhere. The West's economic slowdown shrank markets for goods from the Comecon countries. This meant that the Eastern bloc had to borrow money to finance its growing trade deficit with the West. The debt of the satellites rose from $19 billion in 1975 to an estimated $62 billion at the end of last year. The annual interest alone is around $8 billion...
Hungarian officials believe that a partially convertible currency will encourage more trade with the West and reduce Hungary's dependence on the Soviet Union and other Comecon countries, which still buy roughly 40% of the nation's exports. Some impressive examples of Hungarian products are already being exported to the West. Portland, Ore., San Mateo, Calif., and Louisville, Ky., will soon have Hungarian-American-built Crown-Ikarus buses rolling down their streets. Hungarian officials hope the Soviet Union will recognize that it has the choice of letting its satellites improve their economies-or risking a Polish-style blowup...
Only aid from the nations of the Communist economic pact (COMECON), notably the Soviet Union, keeps Viet Nam's economic crisis from sliding into debacle. Moscow, which has 8,000 advisers scattered through the country, is currently pouring $2.5 million a day into military and civilian aid projects, including a $1.8 billion hydroelectric and irrigation complex in Ha Son Binh (formerly Hoa Binh) province, a thermal power station, and completion of the Thang Long Bridge outside Hanoi, left unfinished by the Chinese withdrawal...