ABSTRACT

This chapter summarizes the economic situation in Eastern Europe discusses its foreign policy implications for the USSR. It discusses the economic situation in the region, covering the period to the end of 1977 in most cases and the plans and prospects of the 1976–1980 five-year plan. Extensive growth requires economic mobilization—putting all able-bodied people to work or to school, undertaking a high level of investment, and directing investment into sectors yielding high output per unit of investment, at least in the short run. Bulgaria, Rumania, Yugoslavia, and Albania share the Balkan historical region, and have in common the fact of economic backwardness and foreign domination before World War II. All East European countries except Albania have recently become net borrowers from the West. The economic relationship between the Soviet Union and East Europe, after Stalin, changed substantially.