East Europe in the Interwar Period Economics

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East Europe in the Interwar PeriodEconomics
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Countries of the Danube Basin

• Small states
• Young states
• Political/military dependence on Great Powers
• Economic dependence?

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Reasons for economic dependence

• Small size of the states small domestic markets,
  many neighbours, importance on foreign trade
• Structural backwardness importance of agrarian
  sector
• Economic policy role of the state
• Problem of finding a position in international
  economic system

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Specific problems of the interwar period

• Budgetary situation foreign debt, reparations
• Demographic problems refugees
• Loss/Acqusition of economically important
  territories
• Great Depression/World Economic Crisis 1929-1933

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Interests and concepts in East Europe

• Economic modernization
• Access to western markets
• Concepts participation in free world trade vs.
  regional autarchy

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Development in the 1930s

• Increasing tendency towards regional autarchy
• Reasons Great Depression, collapse of free world
  trade, isolation of western markets against
  imports from East Europe
• Consequence Germany remains as only major
  industrialized market

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German-East European economic relations

• Partly correspondence between political and
  economic interests regional autarchy
  revisionism
• Traditional German concepts Mitteleuropa, MWT
• German interest in intensive trade and regional
  development corresponds with interests of East
  European countries

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Consequences

• East Europe adaptation to German import
  interests
• Gradual modernization of production, increasing
  diversity of export goods
• Partly economic recovery
• Increasing dependence on Germany