ABSTRACT
The reform of 1971 attempts of the early 1960s vanished with Nikita Khrushchev’s demise. The new Soviet administration under Brezhnev and Kosygin didn’t show much initiative with regards to policy proposals to reform the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA). The national economic reforms undertaken by most CMEA member states were an additional strong factor urging new negotiations inside the CMEA, since they threatened to further erode the compatibility of the respective planning processes, thereby hindering the expansion of trade inside the CMEA. In contrast to the International Socialist Division of Labor and the attempts of the Khrushchev administration to push through wide-ranging reforms in record time, the Socialist Economic Integration promised only limited immediate consequences. Since the economic reforms enacted by the CMEA countries during the 1960s differed more or less from country to country, the traditional bilateral trade suffered from the increasing incompatibility of the planning and allocation mechanisms.
