Authors

Discussion

The history of European integration is typically framed as a story centred on the West, beginning with the end of World War II and culminating in the fall of communism in the 1980s. The conventional narrative argues that the end of communism opened the door for Eastern European countries to partake in the predominantly Western-led project of creating a united and evenly-prosperous Europe. This paper nuances this perspective by arguing that integration was a key concern not only for policymakers in the West, but also for those in the socialist East. It contends that integration, as it was conceived and institutionalised in Eastern Europe, was shaped not only by inter-bloc competition, as historians often suggest, but also by the relationship between evolving global economic dynamics, individual national strategies, and domestic social factors that arose from them. By building on archival materials and contemporary scientific publications, the paper examines the role of three crucial global events – the Korean War (1950–1953), the Yom Kippur War (1973), and the Iranian Revolution (1979) – in shaping Hungarian policymakers conceptions of economic interdependence and governance in terms of decolonisation, globalisation, and financialisation, respectively. On the one hand, the paper highlights how these processes, together with their social impacts on domestic policymaking, shaped Hungary’s approach to cooperation within the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) and its pursuit of new, profit-driven trade relationships with the Middle East, often independent of political ideologies. On the other hand, it addresses Hungarian policymakers’ conceptualisation of monetary integration, focusing on attempts to achieve currency convertibility and the eventual creation of the transferable ruble to improve intra-bloc accounting between socialist states.