Authors

Szinan Radi¹;  ¹ University of Cambridge, UK

Discussion

In the 1950s, Eastern Europe embraced isolationism and import substitution industrialisation policies, sacrificing consumption and social stability. From the 1960s, social crises compelled communist states to re-evaluate their developmental strategies to increase welfare by opening to global markets. Meanwhile, due to decolonisation, revolutions, and the nationalisations of oil industries, Middle Eastern states emerged as crucial sovereign actors in the global economic arena. In the wake of these shifts, Middle Eastern nations began to increasingly engage with the socialist bloc, forming new economic ties in an effort to offset Western political and economic dominance. The paper seeks to explore the implications of these new engagements in terms of money, the transfer of expertise, and the legitimacy of socialist and Middle Eastern modernisation strategies. It argues that new economic relationships between socialist Eastern Europe and hard currency-rich Middle Eastern states played a pivotal role in shaping the legitimacy of socialist and Middle Eastern modernisation efforts. Consequently, this interaction had a profound influence on the broader processes of globalisation, financialisation, and the eventual decline of communism in Eastern Europe.