The Passing of Stalin Is Not the End, or the Unstoppable Integration of the Socialist Market

This article deals with the development of economic cooperation in the socialist market between 1953 and 1968 from the perspective of the Czechoslovak economy. The period of Antonin Novotny at the helm of the Czechoslovak Communist Party has so far been a controversial one, as it has been characterized by both the efforts to reform Stalinist anachronisms and the initially low capacity to sustainably root these reforms in the fragile frozen ground of Cold War-era soil. The question is whether the gradually unfolding Khrushchev Thaw  that accelerated its onset from the second half of the 1950s onwards made it possible to plant certain reforms and reap their fruits in the longer term. It is also necessary to raise the question of the nature of the key actors and obstacles in the process of reforming intra-bloc cooperation. In particular, the archives of the Czechoslovak industrial ministries located in Prague were consulted to research these issues.