“We are coming with visor raised for a talk with the “common market””: a history of negotiations between the CMEA and European communities on relationship fundamentals in 1972 - 1979

In the 1970s under the conditions of détente the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA), an integrative association of “the socialist camp”, and the European Communities (EC), an integrative association of Western Europe, started and for some time conducted negotiations. Until recently this negotiation process between the two economic antipodes has never been seriously studied in Russian historiography. It was mainly due to the fact that the relative documents of both the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the European Communities could not be accessed. However, in few research papers published by Western historians the negotiations between the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance and the European Communities in the late 1970s were dubbed “the dialogue between the deaf and dumb”. The article offers the first comparative analysis of the documents from the archives of these two associations. The main attention is paid to the course of the negotiations as well as to the reasons why these negotiations have never received any official mutual recognition on the part of these integrative institutions, with no cooperation agreement being achieved. What were the CMEA and the EC like in the 1970s? Which interests did they pursue ? How did bureaucratic negotiation mechanisms work? Why did the two integrative institutions of the East and the West fail to officially recognize each other, despite largely expanded contacts and a long-lasting negotiation process on fundamental relations in the 1970s? Can it be explained by the détente moving into its closing phase in the late 1970? The author seeks to find convincing answers to these as well as other questions.