ABSTRACT
East—West trade had already started to increase significantly in the mid-1960s after the Cuban Crisis but this process was accelerated in the early 1970s. The import of capital goods by the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) countries from Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member states increased from 998 million US dollars in 1965 to 9.84 billion US dollars in 1975. Importing capital goods often meant importing sophisticated Western technology from the OECD countries that was to be integrated in the production processes of the planned economies. In scholarship, the fact has been overshadowed by the new quality of East—West exchange in the 1970s. Although the import of sophisticated Western technology probably was a very amazing occurrence for Western observers and socialist planners alike, the bread-and-butter trade took place inside socialist Eastern Europe and thus inside the CMEA.
