By Dr. Alex Tokarev and Kristin Tokarev

Shoe, then collapse. The author starts with Khrushchev’s 1960 “we will bury you” and says CMEA (Comecon) after 1945 locked Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania—later Mongolia, Cuba, Vietnam—into state ownership, banned private initiative, and replaced prices with planners’ guesses.

Political specialization, shoddy goods. Examples: Hungary’s Ikarus buses; East Germany’s Trabant/Wartburg vs. the Beetle; Poland’s coal peak of 200 million tons in 1979, then 1980 strikes, an 80% drop in CMEA coal exports in two years, and recession; Czechoslovakia’s uncompetitive machines; Bulgaria’s Balkancar forklifts sold in the West at a loss; Ceaușescu’s debt payoff via rationing; Soviet cars costing years of wages.

Cuba as the hangover. After joining CMEA in 1972, ~80% of Cuban exports went there; when the USSR fell, GDP dropped about a third. Author’s line: output without market prices and competition looks strong in GDP tables and fails when buyers can choose.

On October 12, 1960, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev pounded his shoe on the podium during a speech at the United Nations General Assembly, yelling at the capitalist countries: “We [the socialists] will bury you!” Within 30 years, socialism, not capitalism, was dead and buried in Eastern Europe. The USSR disappeared from the maps.

Why was the Russian leader so confident in the victory of Marxism? Why was his prediction so wrong? The answer lies in the nature of socialism as a way to organize production and exchange. Capitalism relies on entrepreneurial profit-seeking and market price signals. Socialism relies on benevolent controls and the wisdom of experts.

Within five years of occupying Eastern Europe, Moscow entangled the economies of Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania with the USSR in the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (abbreviated as Comecon or CMEA). By 1978, this pact integrated Mongolia, Cuba, and Vietnam.

Private property was expropriated. Business initiative was criminalized. Profit became a dirty word. Everyone was employed by the state. Market mechanisms were replaced with central planning. Setting wages and prices became guesswork for bureaucrats in government agencies. The result was shortages and shoddy products.

CMEA members were ordered to specialize in producing something that the others would buy. Consumer preferences could not be revealed to determine what to make. The cost of resources could........

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