ABSTRACT
Economic cooperation between the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union is in a deep crisis. In general, the command model of socialist economies is incompatible with an active participation in international economic relations organized on a market basis, because it is unable to adjust quickly to all the changes permanently taking place under such a system. The experience of economic cooperation within COMECON shows that contractual prices influence the directions of the "international socialist division of labor" only very little. From 1969 onward, the bulk of mutual payments within COMECON were made in transferable rubles through the International Bank of Economic Cooperation, or IBEC. The revolutions that swept East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Rumania in late 1989 created an entirely new situation. All the European members of COMECON became active and genuine supporters of market economies, which, as it might seem, could breathe new life into the strategy of market integration.
