Editor's Note

This issue begins with an article by Michael De Groot discussing the impact of the 1973–1974 Arab oil embargo and the concomitant rise in global energy prices on the Soviet-led Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA). Although the Soviet Union as an energy exporter stood to gain economically from the surge of prices, the crisis had broad negative consequences in CMEA, underscoring the flaws and inefficiencies of Soviet-style economies. Most of the East European countries in the 1970s had borrowed extensively from Western banks and governments, causing a large buildup in hard-currency debt. Because increases in Soviet energy production did not keep pace with the surge of debt-fueled demand from other CMEA countries, the Soviet Union decided to raise prices for CMEA importers, deepening the economic pressures they were facing in the early 1980s as payments on their foreign debts came due. The sharp increases in energy costs in the...