Editing Comecon (section)

===Foundation===
[[File:Ex-Comecon building, 2009-06-22.jpg|thumb|left|upright|Former USSR Comecon headquarters in Moscow.<ref>{{Cite web|title=СОГЛАШЕНИЕ между Правительством Союза Советских Социалистических Республик и Советом Экономической Взаимопомощи об урегулировании вопросов, связанных с месторасположением в СССР учреждений СЭВ|url=https://www.mid.ru/foreign_policy/international_contracts/2_contract/-/storage-viewer/bilateral/page-461/58878|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210612125232/https://www.mid.ru/foreign_policy/international_contracts/2_contract/-/storage-viewer/bilateral/page-461/58878 |archive-date=2021-06-12 }}</ref>]]
The Comecon was founded in 1949 by the [[Soviet Union]], [[People's Republic of Bulgaria|Bulgaria]], [[Czechoslovak Socialist Republic|Czechoslovakia]], [[Hungarian People's Republic|Hungary]], [[Polish People's Republic|Poland]], and [[Socialist Republic of Romania|Romania]]. The primary factors in Comecon's formation appear to have been [[Joseph Stalin]]'s desire to cooperate and strengthen the international relationships at an economic level with the smaller states of Central Europe,<ref name="loc-cs" /> and which were now, increasingly, cut off from their traditional markets and suppliers in the rest of Europe.<ref name="Jeffries 1998, p. 536">Bideleux and Jeffries, 1998, p. 536.</ref> Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland had remained interested in Marshall aid despite the requirements for a [[convertible currency]] and [[market economy|market economies]]. These requirements, which would inevitably have resulted in stronger economic ties to free European markets than to the Soviet Union, were not acceptable to Stalin, who in July 1947, ordered these communist governments to pull out of the Paris Conference on the European Recovery Programme. This has been described as "the moment of truth" in the post-[[World War II]] division of Europe.<ref>Bideleux and Jeffries, 1998, pp. 534–35.</ref> According to the Soviet view the "Anglo-American bloc" and "American monopolists ... whose interests had nothing in common with those of the European people" had spurned east–west collaboration within the framework agreed within the United Nations, that is, through the Economic Commission for Europe.<ref>Kaser, 1967, pp. 9–10.</ref>

Some say that Stalin's precise motives in establishing Comecon were "inscrutable"<ref name="Jeffries 1998, p. 535">Bideleux and Jeffries, 1998, p. 535.</ref> They may well have been "more negative than positive", with Stalin "more anxious to keep other powers out of neighbouring [[buffer state]]s… than to integrate them."<ref>W. Wallace and R. Clarke, ''Comecon, Trade, and [[Western World|the West]]'', London: Pinter (1986), p. 1, quoted by Bideleux and Jeffries, 1998, p. 536.</ref> Furthermore, [[General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade|GATT]]'s notion of ostensibly nondiscriminatory treatment of trade partners was thought to be incompatible with notions of [[socialism|socialist]] solidarity.<ref name="Jeffries 1998, p. 536"/> In any event, proposals for a [[customs union]] and economic integration of Central and Eastern Europe date back at least to the [[Revolutions of 1848]] (although many earlier proposals had been intended to stave off the Russian and/or communist "menace")<ref name="Jeffries 1998, p. 536"/> and the state-to-state trading inherent in centrally planned economies required some sort of coordination: otherwise, a [[monopoly|monopolist]] seller would face a [[monopsony|monopsonist]] buyer, with no structure to set prices.<ref>Bideleux and Jeffries, 1998, pp. 536–37.</ref>

Comecon was established at a Moscow economic conference January 5–8, 1949, at which the six founding member countries were represented; its foundation was publicly announced on January 25; [[People's Socialist Republic of Albania|Albania]] joined a month later and [[East Germany]] in 1950.<ref name="Jeffries 1998, p. 535"/>

Recent research by the Romanian researcher Elena Dragomir suggests that Romania played a rather important role in the Comecon's creation in 1949. Dragomir argues that Romania was interested in the creation of a "system of cooperation" to improve its trade relations with the other people's democracies, especially with those able to export industrial equipment and machinery to Romania.<ref>Elena Dragomir, ‘The formation of the Soviet bloc’s Council for Mutual Economic Assistance: Romania’s involvement’, Journal Cold War Studies, xiv (2012), 34–47.http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/JCWS_a_00190#.VQKof9KsX65.</ref> According to Dragomir, in December 1948, the Romanian leader [[Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej]] sent a letter to Stalin, proposing the creation of the Comecon.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Dragomir |first=Elena |date=2015 |title=The creation of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance as seen from the Romanian archives: The creation of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance |url=https://academic.oup.com/histres/article/88/240/355-379/5603008 |journal=Historical Research |language=en |volume=88 |issue=240 |pages=355–379 |doi=10.1111/1468-2281.12083|url-access=subscription }}</ref>
{{confusing|date=December 2016}}
At first, planning seemed to be moving along rapidly. After pushing aside [[Nikolai Voznesensky]]'s [[Technocracy (bureaucratic)|technocrat]]ic, price-based approach (see further discussion [[#How Comecon exchanges worked|below]]), the direction appeared to be toward a coordination of national economic plans, but with no coercive authority from Comecon itself. All decisions would require unanimous ratification, and even then governments would separately translate these into policy.{{clarify|date=December 2016}}<ref>Bideleux and Jeffries, 1998, pp. 539–41.</ref> Then in summer 1950, probably unhappy with the favorable implications for the effective individual and collective [[sovereignty]] of the smaller states, Stalin "seems to have taken [Comecon's] personnel by surprise,"{{clarify|date=December 2016}} bringing operations to a nearly complete halt, as the Soviet Union moved domestically toward [[autarky]] and internationally toward an "embassy system of meddling in other countries' affairs directly" rather than by "constitutional means"{{clarify|date=December 2016}}. Comecon's scope was officially limited in November 1950 to "practical questions of facilitating trade."{{clarify|date=December 2016}}<ref>Bideleux and Jeffries, 1998, pp. 541–42.</ref>

One important legacy of this brief period of activity was the "Sofia Principle", adopted at the August 1949 Comecon council session in Bulgaria. This radically weakened [[intellectual property]] rights, making each country's technologies available to the others for a nominal charge that did little more than cover the cost of documentation. This, naturally, benefited the less industrialized Comecon countries, and especially the technologically lagging Soviet Union, at the expense of East Germany and Czechoslovakia and, to a lesser extent, Hungary and Poland. (This principle would weaken after 1968, as it became clear that it discouraged new research{{snd}}and as the Soviet Union itself began to have more marketable technologies.)<ref name="Jeffries 1998, p. 542">Bideleux and Jeffries, 1998, pp. 542–43.</ref>

In a recent paper by Faudot, Nenovsky and Marinova (2022) the functioning and the collapse of the Comecon has been studied. It focuses on the evolution of the monetary mechanisms and some technical problems of multilateral payments and the peculiarities of the transfer ruble. Comecon as an organization proved unable to develop multilateralism mainly because of issues related to domestic planning that encouraged autarky
and, at best, bilateral exchanges.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Faudot |first=Adrien |last2=Marinova |first2=Tsvetelina |last3=Nenovsky |first3=Nikolay |date=2022-07-20 |title=Comecon Monetary Mechanisms. A history of socialist monetary integration (1949–1991) |url=https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/114701/ |access-date=2023-04-20 |website=mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de |language=en}}</ref>