Word: czechoslovakia
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Chains on Baby Carriages. The consequences of the economic slowdown touch everyone. Czechoslovakia's distribution system is verging on collapse. Women must rise at dawn to search for fresh meat; eggs are often difficult to find in the cities. For long weeks during the summer, lack of railroad cars tied up 3,600 tons of meat and 105,000 tons of other Soviet goods at the border transfer point of Cierna. No one is starving, but Czechoslovaks returning from trips to Germany and Austria carry suitcases stuffed with food...
...Czechoslovakia is running into balance of payments difficulties and has had to cut back drastically on its imports of production equipment. The country's primary exports, including timber and Prague ham, are in short supply. Another reason for the export decline is the increasing shoddiness of Czechoslovak goods. A survey of fac tory managers showed that two-thirds of them give priority to the home market because, the report said, "the people are not selective." The men in charge of the economy vigorously protest the refusal of the U.S. to grant Czechoslovakia most-favored-nation tariff treatment. By stimulating...
Scapegoats. The beleaguered country has become a classic case study in Communist mismanagement and exploitation. Before World War II, "Made in Czechoslovakia" was a hallmark of excellence in steel, machine tools, glass, textiles, machinery and leather...
Czechoslovaks survived the war with their industrial plants largely intact, but then came the Communist coup of 1948. Prague adopted the Soviet economic system, and the Soviets, in turn, drained Czechoslovakia, buying its production at dictated prices. One notable example is uranium. Czechoslovakia had the world's first producing uranium mine, and it supplied the pitchblende from which Mme. Curie isolated radium. During the 1950s, Russia bought most of Czechoslovakia's uranium for the cost of production, which was set artificially low because the mines were manned largely by unpaid political prisoners and located on state-owned land...
...Deputy Prime Minister under Dubček, Sik initiated far-reaching decentralization and began rapidly to modernize the economy, particularly in consumer industries that had suffered from decades of neglect. Sik also hoped to get $400 million in credits from the West, a step that would have relieved Czechoslovakia of some of its heavy dependence on the Soviets for markets and raw materials...