On the Issue of Long-Term Credit between East and West

Abstract

Among the issues that are often the subject of international conferences in recent times is the issue of the development of economic relations between the East and the West. However, individual aspects of the entire complex of problems of this kind are solved in practice with an intensity that no one would have expected, which concerns both socialist countries and the majority of developed capitalist countries. Experience so far indicates that it is not an immediate, outright temporary phenomenon; the matter apparently has a deeper and more serious meaning. This results mainly from the analysis of the specific conditions of the process of developing economic relations between the East and the West.

In the economic sphere, the dynamics of the development of relations between the East and the West is most evident in the area of ​​foreign trade. It can be said that until recently, operations on other economic sections of relations between the two groups of countries were mainly limited to securing "ordinary" foreign trade operations. Long-term financial operations or operations of a licensing nature are almost impossible in this area. they did not exist and were subject to sharp foreign exchange and commercial political restrictions. Foreign trade was also affected by strong restrictive measures, etc., for a long time, even in such a way that exports to socialist countries were subject to an embargo for a large part of civilian products. This practice reached its peak in the first half of the fifties.