Gertrude Enderle-Burcel, Dieter Stiefel, Alice Teichova (Hrsg.): Sonderband 9. „Zarte Bande” – Österreich und die europäischen planwirtschaftlichen Länder / „Delicate Relationships” – Austria and Europe’s Planned Economies (2006)
Eduard Kubů: Restoration and Régularisation of Economie Cooperation under the Circumstances of Accelerating Cold War
strategic important types of goods. Other commodities did not play any major role in Czechoslovak imports. Czechoslovak exports were somewhat more varied; food and consumer products represented a more substantial share of the exported commodities. Export of food culminated in 1952 when it represented one third of mutual trade; the share of consumer goods oscillated between 6-12 percent The main commodities imported by Czechoslovakia in the period before 1948 comprised soda, magnesite, aluminium, refined steel, steel balls and bearings, metal sheets and various machine components. Conversely, the exported commodities comprised fuels, kaolin, fire clay, glass, textile products, brass metal sheet, food - primarily sugar, fruit and vegetables. In the first half of the 1950’ies, iron and steel, non-ferrous metals, mineral oils, chemical raw materials, steel balls and bearings, machines for metal-working, chemical and metallurgical industries, electrical engines and electrical instruments, combustion engines and electrical melting furnaces dominated in imports, while coal and coke, motor vehicles, motorcycles, special machines for wood-processing, textile and milling industries, textile, glass and kaolin dominated in exports. The seemingly strange nature of the trade exchange between two industrial states at an intermediate level of economic development where raw materials predominated over the low share of finished products on both sides was the result of objective circumstances. Austria and the Czechoslovak Republic had raw materials, which the other partner lacked, and thus trade contacts were traditional and had their logics. For example, the Vienna gas plant was constructed exclusively for combustion of coal from the Ostrava-Karvinâ mining district. On the contrary, the circumstances were not favourable for exchange of consumer goods. Czechoslovakia, which was preferentially developing the military-strategic complex of heavy industry, strongly neglected the development of the production of consumer goods, of which there was a permanent lack in the local market, and Czechoslovakia was not even able to export the goods of this type in larger quantities (in the period 1948-1953, the export of consumer goods dropped from 34 percent to mere 9 percent in the total Czechoslovak foreign trade!). The unsatisfied demand of the population represented a time bomb for the Communist regime, the systemic elimination of which was, however, being postponed for a long time.65 The foreign currency situation characterised by a high debt of the Czechoslovak Republic in the first half of the 1950’ies did not permit a more substantial import of consumer goods from the western countries. Raw materials and food were preferential imported commodities. The real exchange of goods usually did not reflect the agreed quotas and contracts. It was substantially lower, amounting to around 60-70 percent. After 1948, the Czechoslovak Republic was intentionally concluding agreements with the Restoration and Régularisation of Economic Cooperation 65 The amount of citizens' money in banking institutions highly exceeded the value of all the consumer goods in the market. 217
