The Cmea In Crisis

This book identifies the essential features of the Soviet bloc's economic nexus: the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA), and GorbacheV's reforms. It describes the impact of reforms on the CMEA and speculates on this organization's future. The author links the recent developments within the CMEA with the wide ranging, fundamental changes in the politics and economics of the Soviet bloc.

It also examines the connection between the recent upheaval of the Eastern Alliance to the general flux on the entire European continent in anticipation of the post-1992 abolition of internal trade barriers in the European Community. Sobell argues that the predictions of the CMEA's disintegration must be seen in the context of the planned acceleration of West European unification in the 1990s.

The EC is poised to become the core of the post Cold-War Europe and will act as a magnet on other European countries, including CMEA members. The CMEA in the age of perestroika, Sobell contends, will continue to maintain its communist facade, but will be a profoundly different organization with increasingly dynamic links with Western Europe.

Review: For many years I've been reading Vlad Sobell's superb, if frequently much too brief, analyses on the Soviet and East European economies in the weekly Report on Eastern Europe, published by Radio Free Europe. In this eagerly awaited and up-to-date, longer study, Dr. Sobell shatters the illusion that the CMEA is or ever was the East European equivalent' of the West European Common Market.

Indeed, the CMEA--essentially dormant over the years--is now on its deathbed, and this study offers a well-informed, balanced assessment of future prospects for the East European economies in the 1990s. -Charles Gati Professor of Political Science Union College