DOUBTS OF SOVIET ABILITY TO WELD RED TRADE BLOC

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23271, 5 June 1950, Page 5

DOUBTS OF SOVIET ABILITY TO WELD RED TRADE BLOC

<lO a.m.) WASHINGTON, June 4. There was still "considerable doubt that the Russians would succeed in welding the Soviet Union and her East European satellites into a solid economic bloc, said the United States Agricultural Department m a statement in the monthly publication, Foreign Agriculture. It added that the entire creation of the Soviet bloc was geared to the needs of the Soviet Union and not of those of satellites. The success of Soviet integration with her satellites would depend on three factors: 1. Success in industrialising the pre- ' dominantly agricultural satellite countries. _ . 2. The continued ability of the Soviet Union to supply East European countries with the raw materials and other goods so necessary for industrial production. 3 The continued ability of the satellites to ship industrial goods, such ras locomotives, to the Soviet Union. A shortage of those very goods was hampering the satellites’ own economies. . _ . The department said the Soviet Union, by arbitrary price-fixing, was getting far more valuable goods out of the satellite countries than she was ' shipping in. The Soviet Union set a high price on the goods she sold to the satellites and a low price on those * she bought from the satellites.