The Impact of International Economic Disturbances on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe: Transmission and Response focuses on the transmission of economic disturbances to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, as well as the policy responses of both to such disturbances. Topics covered include external inflation, balance of trade, and resource allocation, along with the impact of the world economic crisis on intra-CMEA trade. This book is comprised of 16 chapters and begins with an overview of major international economic disturbances during the first half of the 1970s and their transmission to the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries. The following chapters examine the adjustment made by East European economies to external disturbances; external inflation, balance of trade, and resource allocation in small centrally planned economies; whether the Soviet Union was affected by the international economic disturbances of the 1970s; and the relationship between foreign trade and the Soviet economy. The transmission of international disturbances to Yugoslavia, Hungary, and Poland and the responses of each country are also discussed. The final chapter assesses how the energy crisis and Western ""stagflation"" have affected the nature of Soviet-East European political relations in the years 1956-1973. This monograph will be of interest to economists and economic policymakers.

The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe are moving away from a centrally planned economy toward integration within the global economy. How did this transition begin? Is this an aim which all the countries can afford? What conditions are to be met so that the countries will achieve a level of development comparable with the average level of their industrial partners? In this 1992 volume, leading international political economists from both the East and West provide an in-depth analysis of these questions. The contributors assess how the transition to the market requires liberalizing foreign trade, introducing convertibility, and transforming property structures, all of which are also part of the ongoing domestic reform. They also examine how these countries overcome their development lag and implement a restructuring policy.

Assesses likely effects of the emerging market economies on world trade.

Economic reform, structural adjustment, macroeconomic stabilization, and participation in the world economy are interconnected aspects of the same issue: the long-term economic viability of centrally planned economies in the rapidly changing economic environment of the modern world. Any economic strategy that focuses on only one or two of these aspects at the expense of the others is likely to fail; yet even strategies that build on all of these bases may well fail unless political leaders can muster exceptional skill, garner international support, and enjoy some good luck. The contributions to this volume reflect the recent research on this issue by various specialists on the economies of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Each author emphasizes macroeconomic stabilization, structural adjustment, participation in the larger world economy, or ecomonic reform.

The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe provide unique examples of large-scale relatively highly developed centrally planned economies. In the 1980s economists in both the East and West began to focus with increasingly critical attention on the economies of the Soviet Bloc, in an attempt to explain why they were performing so poorly in comparison with the economies of the Western powers and the capitalist countries of South-East Asia. First published in 1988 this substantial and innovative contribution to the critical literature on the economies of the former Soviet bloc is unusual in that its author is equally familiar with both Western and Eastern sources. It highlights, in particular, a discrepancy between the behaviour of individuals in Soviet-style economies and that expected of agents in a market system. It proceeds to outline how the consequent discordance between microeconomic practice and macroeconomic planning generates fundamental economic distortions.

The Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and the new international economic order / Christopher Coker.

Soviet scholars have apparently stayed clear of meaningful analysis of such touchy subjects as interdependence and conflict in the relationship between economics and politics. Very little has been published on this issue—no surprise in a system that controls centrally both politics and the economy, with an emphasis on rapid economic development. The absence of meaningful Soviet research led the Federal Institute for East European and International Studies in Cologne to sponsor an international interdisciplinary conference on the subject. Contributions to the resulting book cover three main areas. The first includes the impact of traditional Russian political culture on contemporary Soviet economic thinking and behavior, the rank of economic aims in the priority system of Soviet politics, and the function of economic institutions in the implementation of political aims. The second concerns the role of political lobbies in the economy and repercussions of economic change for Soviet politics. Foreign economic relations and the USSR's foreign policy make up the third area. The concluding discussion reviews the state of international research and identifies areas for future study.

At first, it seemed as if the international financial crisis that broke out in 2008 would have little effect in Russia and the other post-Soviet states. But, by the end of the year, growth was slowing, banks were reluctant to lend, share values had collapsed and unemployment was rising inexorably. The stability of the Putin leadership, it appeared, had been built on the turnaround in economic performance that it had managed to achieve over more than a decade. How would it cope with a sudden reversal? In Ukraine, living standards fell even more sharply. In Belarus, there were fewer obvious signs of economic difficulty, but it could hardly be unaffected by the performance of its major trading partners. Drawing on a wide range of evidence, an international group of scholars address the impact of the international financial crisis in the post-Soviet states and the continuing implications of the crisis for these countries themselves and for the wider world. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, now known as East European Politics.

Analyses the main institutional and policy determinants of the foreign trade behaviour of a centrally planned economy and studies factors that affect the level and pattern of foreign trade.