COMECON integration and the automobile industry: the Czechoslovak case

The paper examines the effect of the Comecon negotiation on the development of automobile production in Czechoslovakia between 1949 and 1965. It investigates the reasons that led to the failure of a closer integration of automobile production in the Comecon bloc; it explores which and whose needs oriented the decision-making process and considers what consequences the failure of a more integrative policy had on the Czechoslovak enterprise koda. The paper sheds light on a specific project, elaborated in 1949 by the Czechoslovak specialists and intended to ensure the national producer a leading role in the Comecon international division of labour. The specialists′ effort to protect the national automobile industry was motivated by the strategic importance of the hard currency revenues of the export-led automobile production. The paper argues that the rejection of the Czechoslovak project and the Comecon failure to elaborate a coherent and technically affordable plan to establish a multilateral product specialization within the People′s democracies blocked the modernization of automobile production in Czechoslovakia for almost a decade, determining the decline of competitiveness of koda products on the Capitalist markets and trapping the country′s automobile industry in the "Fordism in one country" described by Abelshauser when discussing the GDR.