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Comecon
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===Leonid Brezhnev era=== From its founding until 1967, Comecon had operated only on the basis of unanimous agreements. It had become increasingly obvious that the result was usually failure. In 1967, Comecon adopted the "interested party principle", under which any country could opt out of any project they chose, still allowing the other member states to use Comecon mechanisms to coordinate their activities. In principle, a country could still veto, but the hope was that they would typically choose just to step aside rather than either veto or be a reluctant participant.<ref name="Jeffries 1998, p. 561">Bideleux and Jeffries, 1998, p. 561.</ref> This aimed, at least in part, at allowing Romania to chart its own economic course without leaving Comecon entirely or bringing it to an impasse (see [[de-satellization of Communist Romania]]).<ref>Bideleux and Jeffries, 1998, p. 566.</ref> Also until the late 1960s, the official term for Comecon activities was ''cooperation''. The term ''integration'' was always avoided because of its connotations of monopolistic capitalist collusion. After the "special" council session of April 1969 and the development and adoption (in 1971) of the Comprehensive Program for the Further Extension and Improvement of Cooperation and the Further Development of Socialist Economic Integration by Comecon Member Countries, Comecon activities were officially termed ''integration'' (equalization of "differences in relative scarcities of goods and services between states through the deliberate elimination of barriers to trade and other forms of interaction"). Although such equalization had not been a pivotal point in the formation and implementation of Comecon's economic policies, improved economic integration had always been Comecon's goal.<ref name="loc-cs" /><ref>Bideleux and Jeffries, 1998, pp. 564, 566.</ref> While such integration was to remain a goal, and while Bulgaria became yet more tightly integrated with the Soviet Union, progress in this direction was otherwise continually frustrated by the national central planning prevalent in all Comecon countries, by the increasing diversity of its members (which by this time included Mongolia and would soon include Cuba) and by the "overwhelming asymmetry" and resulting distrust between the many small member states and the Soviet "superstate" which, in 1983, "accounted for 88 percent of Comecon's territory and 60 percent of its population."<ref>Bideleux and Jeffries, 1998, p. 564.</ref> In this period, there were some efforts to move away from central planning, by establishing intermediate industrial associations and combines in various countries (which were often empowered to negotiate their own international deals). However, these groupings typically proved "unwieldy, conservative, risk-averse, and bureaucratic," reproducing the problems they had been intended to solve.<ref name="Jeffries 1998, p. 568">Bideleux and Jeffries, 1998, pp. 568–69.</ref> One economic success of the 1970s was the development of Soviet oil fields. While doubtless "(Central and) East Europeans resented having to defray some of the costs of developing the economy of their hated overlord and oppressor,"<ref>Bideleux and Jeffries, 1998, p. 568.</ref> they benefited from low prices for fuel and other mineral products. As a result, Comecon economies generally showed strong growth in the mid-1970s. They were largely unaffected by the [[1973 oil crisis]].<ref name="Jeffries 1998, p. 568"/> Another short-term economic gain in this period was that ''[[détente]]'' brought opportunities for investment and technology transfers from [[Western World|the West]]. This also led to an importation of [[Western World|Western]] cultural attitudes, especially in Central Europe. However, many undertakings based on [[Western World|Western]] technology were less than successful (for example, Poland's [[Ursus Factory|Ursus]] tractor factory did not do well with technology licensed from [[Massey Ferguson]]); other investment was wasted on luxuries for the party elite, and most Comecon countries ended up indebted to [[Western World|the West]] when capital flows died out as ''détente'' faded in the late 1970s, and from 1979 to 1983, all of Comecon experienced a recession from which (with the possible exceptions of East Germany and Bulgaria) they never recovered in the Communist era. Romania and Poland experienced major declines in the standard of living.<ref>Bideleux and Jeffries, 1998, pp. 571–72.</ref>
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