Coal – Plan – Communism: How the Success of Cooperation in the Distribution of Raw Materials Led to the Failure of Long-Term Coordination among the CMEA Countries

In the 1950s the Eastern Bloc, following Western Europe, tried to resolve the problem of deficient raw materials for metallurgy through international cooperation. From the mid-1950s, the key role in overcoming the crisis was played by coordination within the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA). On the basis of the CMEA’s documents the article examines how the deficit of coke was overcome in 1958–1959 and analyzes the influence of this local success on forming the idea of long-term cooperation in the economic plans of socialist countries. In 1959 the Standing Committee for Coal Industry and the CMEA Standing Committee for Iron and Steel Industry worked out a number of measures to cope with the deficit of coking coal and separate kinds of metal production. The joint work of the two Standing Committees proved to be the most successful activities of the CMEA departments in the 1950s – 1960s triggered by the sharp deficit of coking coal caused by industrialization plans and limitations in foreign trade with capitalist countries. However, as this experience was applied in the first half of the 1960s to revitalize cooperation within the CMEA via a general coordination plan as well as the fuel and energy balance development until 1980, it turned out a failure. One of the reasons for this failure was a lower economic motivation for tougher regulation of the distribution of resources within the CMEA while the leaders of the socialist countries felt negative to the idea of supranational regulation of the economy of the Eastern Bloc.