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Regional Integration in the Eastern Bloc: Energy Cooperation Between CMEA Countries, c.1950s–80s

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Abstract

This chapter explores the Council for Mutual Economic Aid (CMEA, also known as Comecon). The CMEA existed from 1949 to 1991 and was the most important international organisation in the socialist Eastern bloc alongside the Warsaw Pact. In contrast to comparable Western institutions such as the European Economic Community (EEC) and the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC), however, the CMEA is largely forgotten today. In order to fill this gap, this chapter will illustrate the CMEA’s structure, the main actors of which it comprised and their relative room for manoeuvre in an organisation known for the asymmetrical power of Soviet Russia. Close attention will be paid to CMEA activities in the energy sector and the way these activities were implemented. This chapter argues that the Eastern European energy sector is one of the few examples, where (technology-based) integration among CMEA countries was successful, because the construction and extensions of large-scale energy infrastructures was in the interest of all participating countries. When the Soviet Union changed its political and economic priorities in the 1980s, however, a disintegration process set in, ending with the CMEA’s dissolution in 1991.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This was influenced by the realistic school of thought in international relations theory. See for example Zbigniew K. Brzezinski, The Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict. Revised and Enlarged Edition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967).

  2. 2.

    See for example Randall W. Stone, Satellites and Commissars. Strategy and Conflict in the Politics of Soviet-Bloc Trade (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); Gerd Herzog, ‘Schwäche als Stärke: Bargaining Power im RGW’, Arbeitspapiere des Osteuropa-Instituts der Freien Universität Berlin no. 17 (1998).

  3. 3.

    See for example Ralf Ahrens, Gegenseitige Wirtschaftshilfe? Die DDR im RGW-Strukturen und handelspolitische Strategien 1963–1976 (Cologne: Böhlau, 2000); Suvi Kansikas, ‘Room to Manoeuvre? National Interests and Coalition-Building in the CMEA, 1969–74’, in Sari Autio-Sarasmo and Katalin Miklóssy (eds.), Reassessing Cold War Europe (London: Routledge, 2011), 193–209.

  4. 4.

    Uwe Müller, ‘Introduction: Failed and Forgotten? New Perspectives on the History of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance’, Comparativ 27, nos. 5–6 (2017): 7–25, here 10.

  5. 5.

    Laurien Crump and Simon Godard, ‘Reassessing Communist International Organisations: A Comparative Analysis of COMECON and the Warsaw Pact in relation to their Cold War Competitors’, Contemporary European History 27, no. 1 (2018): 85–109, here 87.

  6. 6.

    Béla Balassa, The Theory of Economic Integration (Homewood: Irwin, 1961), 1–2. Subsequently, he distinguished between cooperation (actions aimed at lessening discrimination) and integration itself (suppression of forms of discrimination) and varying degrees of integration (like a free trade area, customs union, common market, economic union and complete economic integration).

  7. 7.

    See for example Hans-Jürgen Wagener and Thomas Eger, Europäische Integration. Wirtschaft und Recht, Geschichte und Politik (Munich: Vahlen, 2011), 42.

  8. 8.

    Müller, ‘Introduction’, 14.

  9. 9.

    André Steiner, ‘The Council of Mutual Economic Assistance. An Example of Failed Economic Integration?’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft 39, no 2 (2013): 240–58, here 246.

  10. 10.

    Ökonomisches Lexikon, 3rd ed., s.v. “Integration, sozialistische ökonomische.” (Berlin: Die Wirtschaft, 1979), 103–4 [translation by the author].

  11. 11.

    Thomas Misa and Johan Schot, ‘Inventing Europe: Technology and the Hidden Integration of Europe’, History and Technology 21, no. 1 (2005): 1–19, here 1.

  12. 12.

    Regarding the influence of the EEC on the East European integration process see for example Suvi Kansikas, Socialist Countries Face the European Community: Soviet-Bloc Controversies over East-West Trade (Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang, 2014); Axel Lebahn and Gottfried Zieger (eds.), Rechtliche und Wirtschaftliche Beziehungen zwischen den Integrationsräumen in West- und Osteuropa (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1980); Christopher T. Saunders (ed.), Regional Integration in East and West (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1983).

  13. 13.

    Scott D. Parrish and Mikhail M. Narinsky, ‘New Evidence on the Soviet Rejection of the Marshall Plan, 1947: Two Reports’, Cold War International History Project Working Paper 9 (1994), 13ff.

  14. 14.

    Dagmara Jajeśniak-Quast, ‘“Hidden Integration” – RGW-Wirtschaftsexperten in europäischen Netzwerken’, Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte 55, no. 1 (2014): 179–95, here 182–3. Based on material from Romanian archives, Elena Dragomir advanced the hypothesis that the creation of the CMEA was initiated by the Romanian leadership. See Elena Dragomir, ‘The Creation of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance as seen from the Romanian Archives’, Historical Research 88, no. 240 (2015): 355–79.

  15. 15.

    Both documents are printed in Alexander Uschakow, Integration im RGW (Comecon). Dokumente (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1983), 18–21.

  16. 16.

    Jochen Bethkenhagen and Heinrich Machowski, Integration im Rat für gegenseitige Wirtschaftshilfe. Entwicklung, Organisation, Erfolge und Grenzen (Berlin: Berlin-Verlag, 1976), 9.

  17. 17.

    Mongolia, Cuba and Vietnam joined the CMEA in the 1960s and 1970s. China and North Korea had an observer status, and Yugoslavia became an associate. Finland, Iraq, Mexico and other developing countries signed cooperation agreements in the 1970s and 1980s.

  18. 18.

    Andrzej Korbonski, ‘CMEA, Economic Integration, and Perestroika, 1949–1989’, Studies in Comparative Communism 23, no. 1 (1990): 47–72, here 50–1.

  19. 19.

    Jozef M. van Brabant, Economic Integration in Eastern Europe (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989), 22.

  20. 20.

    Valerie J. Bunce, ‘The Empire Strikes Back: The Evolution of the Eastern Bloc from a Soviet Asset to a Soviet Liability’, International Organization 39, no. 1 (1985): 1–46, here 10–1.

  21. 21.

    Henryk Róz˙ański, Spojrzenie na RWPG. Wspomnienia, Dokumenty, Refleksje. 1949–1988 (Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1990), 54.

  22. 22.

    Bethkenhagen and Machowski, Integration im Rat, 37–8.

  23. 23.

    Alexander Uschakow, ‘Probleme der Wirtschaftsintegration im RGW’, Aussenpolitik 23, no. 3 (1972): 148–58, here 150–1.

  24. 24.

    Some of these national representatives developed a sense of loyalty towards the CMEA, leading to conflicts with the national interests of their countries of origin. See Simon Godard, ‘Creative Tension: The Role of Conflict in Shaping Transnational Identity at Comecon’, Comparativ 27, no. 5/6 (2017): 65–83.

  25. 25.

    Jens Hacker, Alexander Uschakow, Die Integration Osteuropas 1961 bis 1965 (Cologne: Wissenschaft und Politik, 1966), 135.

  26. 26.

    Korbonski, ‘Economic Integration’, 53.

  27. 27.

    For an in-depth analysis of the relations between the CMEA and the Organisation of Cooperation of Railways, see Falk Flade, ‘Beyond Socialist Camaraderie. Cross-Border Railway between German Democratic Republic, Poland and Soviet Union (1950s–60s)’, The Journal of Transport History 40, no. 2 (2019): 251–69.

  28. 28.

    Lothar Rüster, Internationale Ökonomische Organisationen der RGW-Länder. Dokumente (Berlin: Staatsverlag der DDR, 1985), 16.

  29. 29.

    Mikhail A. Lipkin, ‘“Mirovoy Kooperativ Narodov”: Sovet Ekonomicheskoy Vzaimopomoshchi, kotoryy pytalsya postroit’ N. S. Khrushchev’, Novyy Istoricheskiy Vesnik, no. 4 (2017): 121–44, here 122–3.

  30. 30.

    Nikolaj Faddejew, Der Rat für Gegenseitige Wirtschaftshilfe (Berlin: Die Wirtschaft, 1975), 51.

  31. 31.

    The official name was the ‘Complex Programme of Further Intensification and Perfection of Cooperation and the Development of Socialist Economic Integration amongst the Member Countries of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance’.

  32. 32.

    P. Sydow et al., Wirtschaftliches Wachstum europäischer RGW-Länder. Ziele – Bedingungen – Aufgaben (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1981), 183–4.

  33. 33.

    Mikhail A. Lipkin, Sovetskiy Soyuz i Evropeyskaya Integratsiya: Seredina 1940-kh – Seredina 1960-kh (Moskva: Rossiyskaya Akademiya Nauk, 2011), 245–7.

  34. 34.

    Ahrens, Gegenseitige Wirtschaftshilfe?, 232–3.

  35. 35.

    Alexander Uschakow, ‘Internationale Rohstoffabkommen im RGW’, in Gernot Gutmann, Karl C. Thalheim and Wilhelm Wöhlke (eds.), Das Energieproblem in Ostmitteleuropa. Teil II: Energiepolitik und Energieverbund in den mitteleuropäischen RGW-Staaten (Marburg: Herder-Institut, 1984), 93–113, here 97–8.

  36. 36.

    John M. Kramer, The Energy Gap in Eastern Europe (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1990), 12–3.

  37. 37.

    Klaus Gestwa, ‘“Energetische Brücken” und “Klimafabriken”. Das energetische Weltbild der Sowjetunion’, Osteuropa 54, no. 9–10 (2004): 14–38, here 25–6.

  38. 38.

    On the electricity-based integration process in Western Europe see Vincent Lagendijk, Electrifying Europe. The Power of Europe in the Construction of Electricity Networks (Amsterdam: Aksant 2008).

  39. 39.

    Russian State Archive of the Economy (Rossiyskiy Gosudarstvennyy Arkhiv Ekonomiki, hereafter RGAE), f. 561, op. 1, d. 23, l. 191–2, ‘Protokol 7. zasedaniya sessii SEV’, Berlin, 18–25 May 1956.

  40. 40.

    RGAE, f. 561, op- 25, d. 13, l. 50, ‘Doklad po ob”edineniyu energeticheskikh sistem i vzaimnoy peredache elektroenergii dlya luchshego obespecheniya potrebnostey evropeyskikh stran narodnoy demokratii’, undated.

  41. 41.

    Dieter Mentz and Joachim Pfeffer, Die rechtliche Regelung der internationalen Energiebeziehungen der RGW-Länder (Munich: Saur, 1982), 92–3.

  42. 42.

    See Pyotr Neporozhniy, ‘Rol Postoyannoy Komissii SEV po Elektroenergii v Razvitii Elektroenergetiki Stran Sotsialisticheskogo Sodruzhestva’, Dostizheniya i Perspektivy, no. 6 (1979): 3–12.

  43. 43.

    The Federal Archive Berlin (Bundesarchiv Berlin, hereafter BArch), DC 20/22109, 2, Protokoll der XXX, RGW-Ratstagung. Anlage 3: ‘Generalschema der Perspektiventwicklung der Vereinigten Elektroenergiesysteme der Mitgliedsländer des RGW und Fragen der Zusammenarbeit mit den Festlegungen des Komplexprogramms, einschließlich der entsprechenden Zusammenarbeit mit dem Elektroenergiesystem der SFRJ’, Berlin, 7–9 July 1976.

  44. 44.

    Paul Josephson, Red Atom: Russia’s Nuclear Power Program from Stalin to Today (New York: Freeman, 2000), 40–1.

  45. 45.

    Yuriy Savenko and M. Samkov, Ob”edinennye Elektroenergeticheskie Sistemy Stran-Chlenov SEV (Moskva: Sovet Ekonomicheskoy Vzaimopomoshchi, 1983), 29–30.

  46. 46.

    Allgemeiner Deutscher Nachrichtendienst/Neues Deutschland, ‘Kommunismus ist auch Sowjetmacht plus Chemisierung’, Neues Deutschland, 10 December 1963, 5.

  47. 47.

    RGAE, f. 4372, op. 77, d. 302, l. 231–2, Materialy SEV, ‘AzNIINP i drugikh organizatsiy po voprosu stroiteľstva magistraľnykh nefteprovodov dlya perekachki nefti iz SSSR v Vengriyu, GDR, Poľshu i Chekhoslovakiyu, undated.

  48. 48.

    RGAE, f. 561, op. 13, d. 35, l. 14, ‘Generaľnaya skhema/osnovnye polozheniya stroiteľstva nefteprovodov’, undated.

  49. 49.

    RGAE, f. 4372, op. 77, d. 302, l. 245, ‘Doklad o stroiteľstve magistraľnykh nefteprovodov dlya perekachki nefti iz SSSR v strany-uchastnitsy SEV’, undated (c. 1958).

  50. 50.

    For general information about the pipe embargo see Angela Stent, From Embargo to Ostpolitik. The Political Economy of West German-Soviet Relations, 1955–1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).

  51. 51.

    State Archive of the Russian Federation (Gosudarstvennyy Arkhiv Rossiyskoy Federatsii, hereafter GARF), f. 5446, op. 98, d. 624, l. 93–4, ‘O perenesenii na 1964 god sroka vvoda v deystvie chasti nefteprovoda Druzhba’, Moscow, 5 April 1963.

  52. 52.

    For more information see Falk Flade, ‘The Druzhba Pipeline’, in Jeronim Perović (ed.), Cold War Energy. A Transnational History of Soviet Oil and Gas (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 321–44.

  53. 53.

    William M. Reisinger, Energy and the Soviet Bloc. Alliance Politics after Stalin (Ithaca IL: Cornell University Press, 1992), 19–20.

  54. 54.

    John P. Hardt, ‘Soviet Energy Policy in Eastern Europe’, in Sarah Meiklejohn Terry (ed.), Soviet Policy in Eastern Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 198–9. For the GDR see André Steiner, ‘“Common Sense is Necessary”: East German Reactions to the Oil Crises of the 1970s’, Historical Social Research 39, no. 150 (2014): 231–50, here 245.

  55. 55.

    For an analysis of Soviet politics regarding the domestic gas sector see: Thane Gustafson, The Soviet Gas Campaign. Politics and Policy in Soviet Decisionmaking (Santa Monica CA: Rand, 1983).

  56. 56.

    Oleg Bogomolov, ‘Aktual’nye Problemy Ekonomicheskogo Sotrudnichestva Sotsialisticheskikh Stran’, Mirovaya Ekonomika i Mezhdunarodnye Otnosheniya, no. 5 (1966): 15–27, here 19.

  57. 57.

    Already before the global oil crises, this issue became known as the ‘fuel and energy problem’ in the Eastern bloc. See for example Ilya Dudinskiy, ‘Toplivno-syr’evaya Problema Stran SEV i Puti ee Resheniya’, Voprosy Ekonomiki, no. 4 (1966): 84–94; Igor D. Kozlov and Yelena K. Shmakova, Sotrudnichestvo stran-chlenov SEV v Energetike (Moskva: Nauka, 1973), 3; Faddejew, Rat für Gegenseitige Wirtschaftshilfe, 9; Sydow et al., Wirtschaftliches Wachstum, 182–3.

  58. 58.

    RGAE, f. 4372, op. 81, d. 2429, l. 145–6, Pis’mo P. Galonskogo dlya A. Ryabenko, Moscow, 11 July 1967.

  59. 59.

    Uschakow, ‘Internationale Rohstoffabkommen im RGW’, 96.

  60. 60.

    The following numbers of employees were deployed in the Soviet Union—GDR: 5000; Poland: 4250; Hungary: 2200; Czechoslovakia: 2100; Bulgaria: 200. See Viktor Petrenko, ‘Od Orenburga do Zapadnoy Granitsy SSSR’, Ekonomicheskoe Sotrudnichestvo Stran-Chlenov SEV, no. 5 (1977): 94–9, here 97.

  61. 61.

    See Bogdan Wos’, ‘Energopol na Trasse’, Ekonomicheskoe Sotrudnichestvo Stran-Chlenov SEV, no. 3 (1984): 18–20.

  62. 62.

    John B. Hannigan, The Orenburg Natural Gas Project and Fuel-Energy Balances in Eastern Europe (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1980), 274–5.

  63. 63.

    RGAE, f. 302, op. 2, d. 1312, l. 8, ‘Proekt polozheniya o Mezhpraviteľstvennoy Komissii po sotrudnichestve v osvoenii orenburgskogo gazokondensatnogo mestorozhdeniya i stroiteľstve magistraľnogo gazoprovoda Orenburg-zapadnaya granitsa SSSR’, undated.

  64. 64.

    A detailed analysis of East-West cooperation and the evolving mutual dependencies in Per Högselius, Red Gas: Russia and the Origins of European Energy Dependence (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

  65. 65.

    The IIB’s main task was to promote economic integration among CMEA countries by offering loans—in the form of transferable roubles and hard currency—for investment projects in the Eastern Bloc. See David Stone, ‘CMEA’s International Investment Bank and the Crisis of Developed Socialism’, Journal of Cold War Studies 10, no. 3 (2008): 48–77, here 48.

  66. 66.

    Leonid Breshnew, ‘Glänzendes Zeugnis des Internationalismus’, Aussenhandel, no. 9 (1979): 27.

  67. 67.

    Ulrich Best, ‘Arbeit, Internationalismus und Energie. Zukunftsvisionen in den Gaspipelineprojekten des RGW’, in Martin Schulze-Wessel and Christiane Brenner (eds.), Zukunftsvorstellungen und staatliche Planung im Sozialismus (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2010): 137–57, here 146.

  68. 68.

    Ahrens, Gegenseitige Wirtschaftshilfe?, 305–6.

  69. 69.

    Bunce, The Empire strikes back, 17.

  70. 70.

    Suvi Kansikas, ‘Calculating the Burden of Empire: Soviet Oil, East-West Trade, and the End of the Socialist Bloc’, in Perović (ed.), Cold War Energy, 345–369, here 348–9.

  71. 71.

    Stone, Strategy and Conflict, 8. See also Lipkin, ‘Kooperativ Narodov’, 134; Herzog, ‘Bargaining Power’, 16–7.

  72. 72.

    BArch/DC 20/5142/2, ‘Bericht über die XXXIV. Tagung des RGW’, Prague, 17 to 19 June 1980.

  73. 73.

    Jochen Bethkenhagen, ‘Oil and Natural Gas in CMEA Intra-Block Trade’, Economic Bulletin 20, no. 12 (1984): 5–12, here 11.

  74. 74.

    Jeremy Russell, ‘Energy in the Soviet Union: Problems for Comecon?’, World Economy 4, no. 2–3 (1981): 291–314, here 307.

  75. 75.

    Bethkenhagen, ‘Oil and Natural Gas’, 11.

  76. 76.

    István Dobozi, ‘Policy Responses to the Energy Crisis. East and West’, ACES Bulletin 23, no. 1 (1981): 25–66, here 64–5.

  77. 77.

    Erik Radisch, ‘The Struggle of the Soviet Conception of Comecon, 1953–1975’, Comparativ 27, no. 5/6 (2017): 26–47, here 27.

  78. 78.

    Jozef M. Brabant, Socialist Economic Integration: Aspects of Contemporary Economic Problems in Eastern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 298.

  79. 79.

    Nuclear energy is a good example here, see for instance Ivaylo Hristov, The Communist Nuclear Era: Bulgarian Atomic Community during the Cold War, 1944–1986, (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2014).

  80. 80.

    Stone, Strategy and Conflict, 227.

  81. 81.

    Margarita M. Balmaceda, ‘The Fall of the Soviet Union and the Legacies of Energy Dependencies in Eastern Europe’, in Perović (ed.), Cold War Energy, 401–420, here 407.

  82. 82.

    Stacy Closson, ‘A Comparative Analysis on Energy Subsidies in Soviet and Russian Policy’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies 44, no. 4 (2011): 343–56, here 348.

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  1. European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder), Germany

    Falk Flade

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  1. Institute for History, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Matthew Broad

  2. Centre for European Studies, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Suvi Kansikas

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Flade, F. (2020). Regional Integration in the Eastern Bloc: Energy Cooperation Between CMEA Countries, c.1950s–80s. In: Broad, M., Kansikas, S. (eds) European Integration Beyond Brussels. Security, Conflict and Cooperation in the Contemporary World. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45445-6_8

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