Századok – 2013

TANULMÁNYOK - Feitl István: Magyar elképzelések a Kölcsönös Gazdasági Segítség Tanácsának megreformálására (1967-1975) VI/1377

MAGYAR ELKÉPZELÉSEK A KGST MEGREFORMÁLÁSÁRA 1967-1975 1421

pathfinding within the CMEA. The reform plans which were elaborated then in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, comprised ideas which aimed at the transformation of cooperation within the framework of the CMEA as well. In Hungary the first proposals were prepared by 1966, and were soon adopted as the official views of the governing Party (MSZMP). In 1968 the struggles among the countries constituting the CMEA around the reform proposals began. Against the market-oriented approach represented by Poland, Czechoslovakia and Poland, was opposed a conservative solution put forward by the Germans, the Romanians and the Bulgarians. Although at first the Soviet Union took a neutral stance, in 1970, after the crises in Czechoslovakia and Poland and the consequent withdrawal it began to oppose inambiguously the Hungarian proposal which favoured the introduction of certain elements of the free market. The complex program of the CMEA adopted in the summer of 1971 reflected this turn. After the explosion of oil prices in 1973 the attitude of the Soviet Union towards the member states of the CMEA changed. It threatened with gradually lifting the bar before the direct influence of the world economy, whereupon the Hungarian leadership not only abandoned definitively its plans of reform, but also, in order to maintain Soviet protectionism as fully as possible, began itself to bargain in Moscow for the preservation of the traditional bureaucratic network of relations and of the advantages that flowed therefrom.