Eastern
European Integration
HTito’s Yugoslavia, refused
to cave in to Stalin in 1948
and stuck to its separate identity by not joining the Warsaw Pact.
–Relations improved after
the death of Stalin, only to decline
again in the 1960s.
HThe principal instrument
for economic integration of
the Soviet bloc was COMECON.
–Each country was to
produce what it was best prepared
for and purchase other products from the other countries.
–Pipelines carrying Soviet
oil and gas to Poland, Czechoslovakia,
Hungary, and East Germany further integrated the economies of these nations with that of the USSR.