European Socialist regimes facing globalisation and European co-operation: dilemmas and responses – introduction

Abstract

So far, historians working on the two sides of what used to be a divided Europe have had considerable contacts but they have operated – at least in the realm of international history and the history of European integration – with largely separate agendas and networks. The authors of this special-issue introduction have both come to work on the increasing interaction between East and West in the framework of détente, and feel that the time is ripe for a scholarly analysis of the concepts, strategies and approaches of the Socialist regimes to pan-European co-operation in the long 1970s. Through a collaborative research effort, specialists on specific Socialist countries and historians of Western Europe (and particularly of its integrative experience) are brought together in this special issue of the European Review of History to bridge the existing gap between two parallel strands of scholarship. Their close collaboration is the key to the conceptual development of a broader view of pan-European co-operation against the background of global economic trends.

Keywords::

• East–West
• détente
• globalisation
• European integration

From the early 1960s until their fall, the Socialist regimes of Europe grew ever more enmeshed in multiple webs of trade, finance and exchange with the capitalist economies of the West, above all with the Western European ones. While still in place in many spheres (especially ideology, security and symbolism) the Cold War partition of the continent was becoming more porous. East and West remained separate, antagonistic and occasionally conflicting spaces of a divided continent, but they were ever more interconnected by multilateral and bilateral patterns of interaction and co-operation that encompassed the whole of Europe, albeit with different degrees of intensity.

We now have a still incomplete but fairly broad historical overview of this process in its political and international-relations dimension. Studies on détente have transcended their original narrow focus on the superpowers' diplomacy and strategies to encompass a larger set of actors, processes and consequences. A far more complex and lasting pattern of intra-European détente has thus emerged. Focus and emphasis have shifted from the conservative intent of détente policies pursued by the two superpowers with the aim of consolidating bipolarity, to the transformative and destabilising effects unleashed across the ‘Iron Curtain’ by the deepening intra-European web of contacts, interaction, openness, exchanges and mutual treaty obligations.1 The burgeoning literature on the history of human rights is engaged in an open, critical debate on the relevance of détente processes in containing or fostering resistance against the Socialist regimes, rattling their shaky legitimacy, and therefore influencing the trajectory of their dissolution.2 In Cold War historiography the triumphalist narrative of Western – and particularly American – strength and resolve is confronted by interpretations of bipolarity's peaceful ending centred, among other factors of global relevance, also on the dissolving consequences of intra-European dialogue and exchanges.3

The intellectual origins of this project stem from a variety of scholarly approaches that emphasise the relevance of East–West relations in the 1970s and 1980s while at the same time signalling a glaring gap in our knowledge of the changing mind-set and outlook of the Socialist governing élites, in particular with regard to their expectations of the evolving rapprochement with Western Europe. The actual mechanisms of trans-European business interaction, financial flows and economic interdependence remain understudied, assumed more than investigated. Even beyond the purely European sphere, the Socialist economies' relations with the globalising trends that were shaking and transforming the world economy await a thorough historical analysis. The same can be said of the views and assumptions with which the Socialist élites approached the perils and opportunities of European co-operation and the international division of labour. This derives in no small part from the Cold War-era tradition of separate studies on Eastern and Western Europe, and particularly from the understandable but now out-dated self-insulation of the historiography on European integration within the geopolitical, institutional and conceptual boundaries of the (Western) European Communities. A few recent studies are beginning to cast some light on this vast, shadowy area of historical knowledge and to conceptualise categories that could – as it is the case with Europeanisation – build useful bridges across those separate terrains. They also indicate both the urgency and the difficulty of the task ahead.4

So far, historians working on the two sides of what used to be a divided Europe have had considerable contacts but they have operated – at least in the realm of international history and the history of European integration – with largely separate agendas and networks. We have both always worked on the Western side of the history of European co-operation and integration and its multiple international dimensions. Lately we have both come to work on the increasing interaction between East and West in the framework of détente, and feel that the time is ripe for a scholarly analysis of the concepts, strategies and approaches of the Socialist regimes to pan-European co-operation in the long 1970s. Through a collaborative research effort, specialists on specific Socialist countries and historians of Western Europe (and particularly of its integrative experience) are brought together in this special issue to bridge the existing gap between two parallel strands of scholarship. Their close collaboration is the key to the conceptual development of a broader view of pan-European co-operation against the background of global economic trends.

We are particularly interested in exploring how the élites of the Socialist regimes conceived and rationalised their increasing economic exchanges with, and deepening financial dependence from, the West. What views of Western Europe, and specifically of the European Economic Community (EEC), did they elaborate as co-operation intensified? How did each of them conceive the place and role of its own country in a potentially pan-European co-operative framework? How did they plan to reconcile transformation with stability, and control the consequences of a less protected and self-enclosed environment? Were they simply driven by short-term economic goals and constraints or did they also imagine a long-term mutual opening and convergence? Above all, how did the Socialist élites envision the coexistence and interaction between adjacent and overlapping spaces shaped by contrasting logics: the Socialist bloc and West European integration, ideological rivalry and a new rhetoric of collaboration, important bilateral relations (especially but not only with West Germany) within the context of multilateral frameworks?

A preliminary workshop held at the European University Institute in December 2011 highlighted several hypotheses that were further explored and tested at a larger conference held in May 2013. The articles of this special issue offer a multi-faceted analysis of the increasingly relevant and yet inherently contradictory place that this nascent pan-European space occupied in the economic, ideological and symbolic life of Socialist regimes. They reveal common patterns but also bring to the surface substantial rifts among regimes that disagreed on the degree of desirability and∖or necessity of opening up to international exchanges. The official rationale for intensifying trade with the West did not simply rely on complementarity of resources and their optimisation. Increased exchanges were seen by Socialist regimes as a shortcut to remedy a growing technological gap, in a language that betrayed an awareness of Socialism's underdevelopment vis-à-vis Western capitalist modernity. The choice to rely on Western means – be they technology or credits – already revealed the Socialist system's inadequacy to cope with modernisation and global competition. It carried the inherent implication that a catch-up process was needed in a long-term perspective of convergence. Rather than the arena for the projected triumph of progressive Socialism upon historically doomed capitalism, Europe was now morphing into a locus of potential rapprochement, recombination and convergence. In addition, connections with Western Europe were also seen – especially in Bucharest, Budapest and Warsaw – as levers for a cautious but determined reconfiguration of hierarchies within their own bloc. Disputes within and around the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA or COMECON) highlighted both disillusionment with Socialist integration and attempts at attenuating Soviet control by repositioning each nation in complex networks of trans-European diplomatic, economic and cultural exchanges. Soviet dominance could not be contested but deliberate attempts were made, and many more conceived, at diluting it within a larger pan-European web of contacts that enhanced each nation's own agency.5

This special issue intertwines international, economic and intellectual-history approaches in order to build a dynamic portrait of the Socialist élites' assumptions, paradigms, goals and constraints in envisioning schemes of interdependence and pursuing policies of East–West co-operation. While framed against the backdrop of incipient globalisation and Europe's changing relations with the wider world – which were central to any sphere of analysis and policy-making – the articles focus on perceptions and visions of Europe as a newly opening space, and shed new light on the complexities of intra-European co-operation.

The articles presented here address three specific dimensions of a multifaceted topic. How the élite of each country assessed their options and predicaments in relation to the larger sphere of globalisation and the changing international division of labour; the analyses and choices they made within the more circumscribed space of intra-European co-operation and exchanges; and, finally, their specific relations with the EEC and CMEA. Research pieces are combined with survey essays, thus providing new analytical findings as well as reflections and suggestions on the way forward in reconceptualising the study of intra-European exchanges and Socialist regimes' relations with the global economy.

André Steiner and Sara Lorenzini focus on the Socialist economies in the global setting. Steiner's article analyses motives and goals of their foreign trade operations and capital-market transactions, as well as their attitude to the main commercial and financial international institutions (GATT, the IMF and World Bank). He concludes that the ‘strategy of import-led growth with an ensuing productivity jump’ led to greater intensity of trade – and greater indebtedness –with the West, but failed to increase the East's share of world trade. More than an actual participation in globalisation, the results of Socialist efforts are best described as a ‘negative integration’ with a lot of ‘muddling through’ the economic and political constraints that made serious reform at home and deeper integration in the world economy impossible.

The limits of the Socialist bloc countries' ability to influence the patterns of globalisation come to the forefront also in their economic relations with the less-developed countries in the 1960s and 1970s. Lorenzini's exploration of the debates among technocrats and policy makers in the Comecon's Commission for technical assistance shows that East–South relations underwent a complete overhaul during the years of détente. Doubts on the appropriateness of the Soviet model emerged in several East European governments. Despite the official Socialist view, by the mid-1970s the myth of Socialism as a robust variant of industrial modernity had collapsed, and Socialist countries' participation in the West-dominated world economy became a necessity. The developing world emerged as the place where a joint East–West co-operation could be envisioned, often in the framework of the so-called trilateral co-operation, where Western Europe had a special role.

Indeed, Western Europe emerges as the main point of reference for the Socialist countries' attempts at overcoming isolation and link up with the world economy. Pan-European co-operation entered the realm of both domestic propaganda and official debates, as highlighted in the essays by Christian Domnitz and Robert English. Domnitz surveys the state media's construction, and communication to their domestic audience, of economic co-operation with the West, and reveals the ambiguities and contradictions inherent in those new conceptualisations of Europe. Indeed, ‘the real threat of being isolated from the West stood against the ideological dogma of self-separation from it.’ Although ‘the mental maps of state socialist elites widened westwards’ within ‘officially accepted narratives of progress, modernisation, peace, technology transfer’, both the lasting legacy of Stalinist narratives and the rigid control on the media hampered a consistent explanation of East–West co-operation. Ultimately, a growing ambivalence in the official public sphere created a ‘credibility trap’ that undermined the very legitimacy of state Socialist rule.

The unsolved dichotomy between the dogma of Socialist exceptionalism and the desire to partake of a larger Europe is also evident in the case of the Soviet Union. Robert English shows that in the post-Stalin decades a new policy-academic elite – economists, philosophers, scientists and writers – embraced reform for a ‘Socialism with a human face’ also as a way for their country's eventual reintegration into a ‘common European home’, what would later become Mikhail Gorbachev's grand design for his perestroika. Yet their understanding of European integration was too limited and superficial, and their appreciation of the hardliners' resistance too tardy, for them to carry their reforms to successful completion. However, English emphasises that the Russian reformers' naiveté was compounded by the Western leaders' own short-sightedness and selfishness.

Beyond propaganda and expert debates, however, most Socialist-bloc countries did adopt reforms that were meant to allow them to connect and possibly integrate with international markets and most specifically with West European economies. The articles in the third section of this special issue (by Eliza Gheorghe, Pavel Szobi, Pál Germuska, and Wanda Jarząbek) focus on national policies in Romania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland. They analyse rationales and goals of the governing élites, the interaction between political leaders and experts in the state economic machinery, the specific solutions adopted in terms of industrial, commercial and financial policies. These articles show a considerable variety of approaches across the spectrum of European Socialist countries, but also shared limitations and common flaws that ultimately undermined such attempts.

Eliza Gheorghe dwells on Romania's attempts to bypass Soviet control of, and constraint on, its modernisation by exploring Bucharest's quest for Western nuclear technology in the 1960s. She exposes the limits of an opening promoted for short-term economic interests, and based on a poor understanding of the competitive dynamics among West Europeans. Business could not lead politics, and playing on competitive instincts and interests backfired. Instead of intensifying the rivalry between the West Europeans, Romania actually contributed to closer integration among some of its potential nuclear suppliers. The case of 1960s Romania indirectly confirms that the flourishing of détente in the early 1970s was of paramount importance in facilitating a more thorough co-operation and solid economic relations across the Iron Curtain, which will survive even the renewed confrontation between the superpowers a decade later.

Pavel Szobi focuses on Czechoslovakia's and the GDR's relations with West European businessmen and private enterprises in the 1970s and 1980s, particularly on licensed agreements and credit policy. He zooms in on the political and managerial elites of both countries, paying special attention to the tensions between ideological and technocratic approaches and their impact on economic planning. This article reveals that commercial contacts between the ČSSR and GDR on the one hand, and West European corporations on the other, were woven on the basis of personal interest and contacts by businessmen and politicians. Thus, it highlights the importance of managerial elites in developing regular East–West connections.

Much more institutionalised and systemic was Hungary's reorientation of its economic and foreign trade relations towards the West in the long 1970s. Pál Germuska demonstrates that disillusionment with CMEA's stagnating integration, which the Hungarian government had long promoted, and the pressure exercised by EEC discriminatory rules (especially in agriculture), were the key factors in Hungary's decision to open to the world outside the CMEA. This process culminated in 1977 with the bold abandonment of the ‘two worlds’ view in favour of Hungary's integration in world economy. And yet, despite robust growth and intensified relations with the West and the Third World, the country was not able to profit from the expected advantages of increased international trade and co-operation. Political restraint, diminishing levels of consumption and the persistence of old patterns of investments in heavy industry made for a stilted and ultimately unsuccessful policy shift. In the end, Hungary's full integration with the world economy amounted to heavy indebtedness and affiliation with the IMF in 1982 as a means to address state bankruptcy.

A similar pattern of determined opening to the West, attempted reforms and even more dramatic ending is visible in the case of Poland. Wanda Jarząbek contrasts and compares the economic policies followed under the two party first secretaries of the period, Władysław Gomułka and Edward Gierek, in order to appraise the importance of domestic and external factors in triggering, and at the same time curbing, their attempts at integrating the country in the world economy. She demonstrates that the economic opening to the West started already in the 1960s, despite the then limited East–West contacts, under Gomułka and was driven by a proactive Polish government. On the other hand, she downsizes the success of Gierek's economic policy. Merely reactive to domestic pressures and foreign trends, it failed to anticipate the double trap it eventually got Poland into, of spiralling indebtedness and irremediable social discontent with the regime.

All these specific case studies investigate the degree to which West European integration and specific EEC policies facilitated or rather complicated and hindered new patterns of international exchange and co-operation. Indeed, one important result of this project is to qualify or even debunk the mythology of a European Community always spreading prosperity and co-operation around its borders. In this context, ‘provincialising the EC’6 also means evaluating its impact from the (not always happy) perspective of the outsiders. The last two articles focus specifically on the interpretations and responses given to what can be called ‘the EEC challenge’ by two peculiar socialist subjects: the CMEA and Yugoslavia.

Suvi Kansikas analyses the impact of the EEC's deepening and enlargement on the CMEA. She makes clear that the EEC Common Commercial Policy in particular forced Socialist countries to reconsider their stated policy of non-recognition and try to formulate a common policy towards the Community. The eventual common position called for the promotion of an agreement between the two organisations. Yet the complex and long negotiations within the CMEA showed the limits of Socialist co-operation and the divisive force of the EEC on the Eastern bloc. The two driving forces that Kansikas detects beyond the agreed CMEA stance reveal serious intra-bloc tensions: on the one hand, the countries that most relied on foreign trade pushed for an opening to the EEC and resisted plans for further CMEA integration; on the other, the Soviet Union's eventual agreement to promote EEC-CMEA contacts was motivated by its awareness of the EEC's disruptive force on the cohesion of the Socialist bloc, and the desire to control its allies' opening to the Community. ‘If its allies could not be prevented from engaging in contacts with the European Communities, then at least, the Soviet leadership wanted to have a say in how those relations would be coordinated and developed.’

The irresistible force of attraction – or potentially damaging effects – of the EEC on its European neighbours is also evident in the case of Yugoslavia, the European Socialist outsider. As Ivan Obadic demonstrates, the signing of the Treaty of Rome and the Community's initial success had a profound impact on the direction of Yugoslav foreign trade. Although able and keen to cultivate relations with developing countries, the Socialist bloc and even the United States, Yugoslavia had a vital interest in increased trade relations with the EEC. It was the first socialist country to establish diplomatic and trade relations with the Community in 1968. Through a detailed analysis of the origins and evolution of Yugoslav policy toward the EEC until the signing of the Cooperation Agreement in 1980, Obadic demonstrates that relations with the EEC in the 1970s became the key factor in Belgrade's efforts to maintain the economic and, ultimately, political stability of Yugoslavia.

Taken together, the essays of this special issue offer a first historical assessment of the late Socialist élites' contradictory views of their place and prospects in an emerging space of trans-European connections that challenged existing patterns of stability, political control and ideological self-legitimisation. That the Socialist bloc countries' attempts at opening and reform were flawed, mostly amounting to an increasingly less effective ‘muddling through’, has long been taken for granted. These articles do not alter such overall assessment, even though they qualify its chronological arc and often identify the specific problems and recipes that each country experienced. They detail the domestic debates and constraints, the early hopes and expectations, that drove the Socialist elites' choices for international co-operation, as well as the complex impact of European and global processes of transformation on the Socialist economies. They give us a fuller mapping of the actual networks of East–West co-operation and exchange; they contextualise and ground détente in the contradictory web of domestic options and limitations that each regime experienced; and they reframe the relevance and impact of long-term patterns of European integration.

Acknowledgements

We want to thank the Research Council of the European University Institute for funding our workshops, and the colleagues who discussed the papers with us: Stefano Bottoni, Youssef Cassis, Pavel Kolár, Stefan Link, Michal Pullmann, Svetozar Rajak.

Notes

^1. See in particular Hanhimäki, “Conservative Goals, Revolutionary Outcomes;” Loth and Soutou, The Making of Détente; Romano, From Détente in Europe to European Détente; Villaume and Westad, Perforating the Iron Curtain; Wenger, Mastny and Nünlist, Origins of the European Security System; Romero and Pons, “Europe Between the Superpowers, 1968–1981;” Du Réau and Manigand, Vers la réunification de l'Europe.

^2.Bange and Niedhart, Helsinki 1975 and the Transformation of Europe; Hoffmann, Human Rights in the Twentieth Century; Moyn, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History; Snyder, Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War; Iriye, Goedde, and Hitchcock, The Human Rights Revolution.

^3. See Leffler and Westad, The Cambridge History of the Cold War, vol. III “Endings”; Romero, Storia della guerra fredda: l'ultimo conflitto per l'Europa; Bozo, Rey, Ludlow, and Nuti, Europe and the End of the Cold War; Savranskaya, Blanton and Zubok, Masterpieces of History;English, Russia and the Idea of the West;Loth, Overcoming the Cold War: A History of Détente, 1950–1991.

^4. See, for instance, Péteri, Imagining the West in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union and Conway and Patel, Europeanization in the Twentieth Century.

^5.Lippert, The Economic Diplomacy of Ostpolitik, argues that intensification of trade with the West exasperated the differences and divergences of interest among Socialist economies, with an increased difficulty at maintaining bloc cohesion or even imagine as overarching value.

^6.Patel, “Provincializing the European Communities.”