Iron Curtain: COMECON's Woes

Europe's Common Market may seem to be traveling to economic integration on a road strewn with rocks, but they are mere pebbles compared with the boulders faced by Moscow in its efforts to forge its satellites into a Communist common market. Shortly after the European Economic Community began operating in 1958, Russia started a hasty conversion of its shaky eight-nation*COMECON (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance) into a Redhued EEC—only COMECON, of course, was to be much better. There would be no wasteful competition among nations, for example, as in the free-market EEC; instead, each member would be assigned to...

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