This volume explores economic relations between socialist planned economies of Central and East European countries and capitalist market economies of neutral states in Europe during the Cold War. It focuses on the significant role of neutral countries as path-breakers in building East–West contacts.

Economic historians have mainly studied relations between the leading Western states and the Soviet Union during the Cold War era, but have so far paid scarce attention to the significance of neutrality in the European context during the second half of the twentieth century. For instance, although affected by the ‘Iron Curtain’, economic relations continued between socialist countries and neutral Austria, the only state in East Central Europe with a functioning market economy during the Cold War. This is of special significance for Austria since three of the socialist planned economies had been successor states of the same Habsburg Monarchy from which the Republic of Austria had also emerged. Thus Austrian neutrality, nourished by geographical closeness and the long common history of Central and South-East European countries, was of considerable importance in making the ‘Iron Curtain’ more permeable than is generally assumed. In a similar way neutral Finland's proximity to the Soviet Union and the socialist countries of Eastern Europe engendered trade and financial relations between its market economy and the planned economic systems in spite of restrictions imposed by the Cold War. For comparison, we have also included in our studies the economic relations of neutral Sweden, Switzerland and Ireland with socialist planned economies under Cold War conditions, thus encompassing all European countries with neutrality status.