Thursday, July 9, 2015
H007 (28 rue des Saints-Pères)
The turn of the 1990s witnessed the collapse of the Soviet bloc. The socialist countries’ economic organisation, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) was disbanded in the autumn of 1991, precipitated by the reforms of its members. Besides launching wide-ranging economic and political reforms, the CMEA model of socialist economic integration was abandoned by its European member states. In fact, by late-1980, all of them had already signalled their intention to be included in the European Community’s integration project. They began to look at the EC as the only viable alternative for achieving economic prosperity, thus pushing for the end of the bloc-division in Europe.
The paper argues that one crucial element in the peaceful revolution of 1989/90 in Eastern Europe was the appearance of a viable alternative to Moscow-based cooperation: the deepening integration process of the EC in the late-1980s, which became a dynamic pole of attraction for the socialist states. What is more, in order to be able to turn away from the Soviet Union, the East Europeans needed assurance of a fundamental change in the Soviet foreign policy. This was received in 1989 when the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev officially denounced the co-called Brezhnev doctrine. How did the Soviet allies analyse their room to manoeuvre vis-à-vis the Soviet Union now that the bloc system seemed to be transforming? When did they understand that their economic system should not just be reformed, but transformed?
The paper argues that one crucial element in the peaceful revolution of 1989/90 in Eastern Europe was the appearance of a viable alternative to Moscow-based cooperation: the deepening integration process of the EC in the late-1980s, which became a dynamic pole of attraction for the socialist states. What is more, in order to be able to turn away from the Soviet Union, the East Europeans needed assurance of a fundamental change in the Soviet foreign policy. This was received in 1989 when the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev officially denounced the co-called Brezhnev doctrine. How did the Soviet allies analyse their room to manoeuvre vis-à-vis the Soviet Union now that the bloc system seemed to be transforming? When did they understand that their economic system should not just be reformed, but transformed?
