During the cold war planned economies tried to separate their internal and external trade, so as not to be affected by international trade cycles while trading with capitalist countries. However, researchers have in both old and recent discussions pointed out that planned economies trade with market economies could have affected their internal trade. This paper studies the effects of market economies foreign trade development on European planned economies foreign trade development between 1958-1991. It combines the theory of transferring market cycles through foreign trade with theories of market economies effects on planned economies. The foreign trade development of market economies had a greater effect on the smaller planned economies than on the Soviet Union. The foreign trade of the planned economies was also affected by the lifting of the CoCom embargo and the foreign trade reforms among Comecon members in 1958. Planned economies also seem to have had an internal investment structure similar to the market economies, since both economic systems were affected in the same way by international price shocks.

Cette thèse contribue à la connaissance d’une organisation internationale méconnue du système-monde socialiste entre 1949 et 1991, le Conseil d’Aide Economique Mutuelle (CAEM). Elle mobilise simultanément plusieurs fonds d’archives – du CAEM lui-même, de la RDA, de la Stasi et de l’ONU -, et rompt avec les monographies nationales sur la participation d’un Etat à son activité. Au prisme du CAEM et des réseaux d’acteurs qu’il met en place, c’est la notion même de « bloc » de l’Est qui est interrogée. L’organisation est en effet une vitrine de la cohésion et de la solidarité du monde socialiste pendant la Guerre froide. L’étude examine la place du CAEM dans un espace en construction et en quête de légitimation au cours de la seconde moitié du XXème siècle. Le rôle du CAEM dans les échanges économiques entre pays socialistes est d’abord mis en lumière. L’organisation élabore son propre modèle d’économie internationale socialiste. Pourtant, un découplage stratégique s’opère entre l’intérêt du CAEM dans l’affrontement symbolique avec le monde capitaliste et son incapacité pratique à assurer la modernisation des économies socialistes. L’étude des mécanismes de spatialisation du « bloc », de structuration de réseaux d’experts par delà les frontières et de production de discours sur l’économie internationale socialiste permet alors de proposer une socio-histoire transnationale de l’évolution des pratiques professionnelles d’une catégorie d’acteurs spécifiques. Les agents du CAEM comptent parmi les rares individus qui, dans le monde socialiste, développent une acculturation transnationale leur permettant véritablement de considérer le « bloc » comme un espace approprié. / This thesis contributes to the knowledge about the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon, CMEA), the little-known international organization of the socialist world-system, from 1949 to 1991. Unlike most historical monographs analysing the individual member States’ contribution to Comecon activities, this study draws on different archive materials – from Comecon itself, the GDR, the Stasi and the UN. Analysing Comecon through the prism of the networks of actors that emerged in the institutional framework it provided, it is the very notion of an Eastern “bloc” that is questioned. The organization was a showcase of the cohesion and solidarity of the socialist world during the Cold War. The study deals with its role in a space under construction and seeking legitimation in the second half of the 20th century. It first casts a light on the role of Comecon in the economic relations of the socialist countries. The organization developed its own model of an international socialist economy. However, a strategic decoupling appeared between the importance of Comecon in the symbolic competition with the capitalist world and its helplessness to ensure the modernization of socialist economies. The study of the spatialization of the “bloc”, the structuration of expert networks beyond the national boarders and the production of discourses on international socialist economy leads to a transnational socio-histoire of specific Comecon agents. Comecon servants counted among the few people in the socialist world, who were able to develop a transnational acculturation that allowed them to truly consider the “bloc” as an appropriated term of reference and space of development.