East-West Economic Relations

Abstract

The decade 1966–75 is usually considered as the golden age of East-West economic relations. Already during the previous decade, i.e. since the end of the cold war, the USSR and the Eastern European countries had increased their trade with the West at an annual rate of growth slightly higher than their total trade. But after 1966 the expansion of trade and cooperation was sustained both by a favourable political climate and by strong economic complementarities between the West (here equated to the OECD countries) and the East (the USSR and the six European countries that are members of the CMEA, or Council for Mutual Economic Assistance; hereafter we shall mention them as CPEs or centrally planned economies, for the sake of brevity).