Long before Chancellor Willy Brandt began bidding for closer political ties with Communist Eastern Europe, West German Economics Minister Karl Schiller was pursuing a business Ostpolitik. Unlike Brandt's diplomacy, which is still in the negotiating stage, it has already produced a solid success. Last week in the Krupp company town of Essen, Schiller and Soviet Foreign Trade Minister Nikolai Patolichev toasted each other with Kupferberg Furst Bismarck champagne after signing what may be the biggest trade deal ever between the U.S.S.R. and a Western nation.
By the end of 1972, the firms of Mannesmann and Thyssen will deliver 1,200,000 tons of 56-inch steel pipe, designed to withstand extreme cold, to Russia. The Soviets need it for pipelines to open the natural gas reserves of Siberia, the world's richest. In return, the Soviets will send to West Germany 52 billion cubic meters of gas over 20 years, starting in 1973. To enable the Soviets to pay for the pipe before they deliver the gas, a consortium of 17 West German banks will lend them $328 million at 6.25% interest—practically foreign-aid terms. A West German firm will build a link extending an existing pipeline from the Czechoslovak border town of Cheb into Bavaria.
The deal has major business advantages for both sides. The Soviet gas will help meet the fuel needs of energy-poor southern Germany, and at a lower price than the Germans would have to pay for Dutch gas piped in from North Sea fields to Bavaria. The Germans also hope for other Soviet export outlets; they now speculate about selling trucks and cars to Russia. The Soviets will get a new Western bridgehead for their gas, which they contracted in December to sell also to Italy.
Gradual Thaw. Most important, the pipe-for-gas trade indicates that trade relations between Bonn and Moscow are less and less influenced by the cold war. Seven years ago, the Germans had arranged to sell pipe to the Soviet Union, but the deal was blocked by the NATO strategic-goods embargo. Nikita Khrushchev was so enraged that he thumped his fist on a table and roared: "Even pants buttons can be called strategic goods. How are soldiers to hold their pants up without buttons?"
In another step toward closer East-West trade links, Yugoslavia and the six-nation European Economic Community last week initialed a three-year trade agreement in Brussels. The treaty, the first between the Common Market and an Eastern European country, is expected to increase Yugoslav exports of beef and other products to the Six. More important, the treaty highlights a growing trend of Communist nations to work with the Common Market rather than oppose it.