University of Sherbrooke

^*Several people were kind enough to help me in providing unpublished data and texts. I am particularly grateful in this regard to I. Abel, J. Brada, T. Condon, D. Havrylyshin, A. Ewing, E. Manes, P. M. Marer, R. McKinnon and P. Messerlin. I would like to thank P. Marer, I. Abel, and M. Fortin for their comments and corrections of the first version of this article. Suggestions by an anonymous reader and the editor of this journal are also gratefully acknowledged. A. Huard typed patiently the successive versions of the text. Above all I am indebted to J. Knowles for translating an earlier French version and for French assistance. I am alone responsible for the opinions and remaining errors. An earlier version of this paper was published in Revue d'etudes Comparatives Est-Ouest, vol. 23, no. 1 (March 1992), pp. 72–108.

Abstract

Of the former socialist countries, it is Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia that are the most advanced in the transition towards a market economy. Given their relatively high level of development, they are generally accorded the best chance of succeeding in this historically unprecedented endeavour. One of the challenges of their economic reforms is to abandon the state monopoly of foreign trade and reintegrate into the international market. This article has three interrelated objectives: to review the literature that shows why the reforms of external relations of former socialist countries became inevitable, to compare the reforms initiated in the three countries, and, to analyze the complications and the preliminary results of the reform process.