International relations within the Comecon
The "Council for Mutual Economic Assistance" (Comecon) was an economic organization of communist states, created in 1949, and dissolved in 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Union. International relations within Comecon is best discussed under three separate categories, as the nature of the relationships between the Soviet Union and its constituent members were not homogeneous. The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe Since Comecon's creation in 1949, the relationship between the Soviet Union and the six East European countries had generally remained the same. The six countries were: Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania. The Soviet Union had provided fuel, non-food raw materials, airplane and helicopter designs and semi-manufactures ("hard goods") to Eastern Europe, which in turn, had supplied the Soviet Union with finished machinery, and industrial consumer goods ("soft goods"). This kind of economic relationship stemmed from a genuine economic problem within the Eastern communist states in the 1950s. Eastern Europe had poor energy and mineral resources, a problem exacerbated by the low energy efficiency of East European industry. As of mid-1985, factories in Eastern Europe still used 40% more fuel than those in the West. Eastern European countries have always relied heavily on the Soviet Union for