This work covers the ways in which small client-states of the Soviet Union were forced to attempt to achieve economic self-sufficiency after the end of World War II; it goes on to examine how and why that process did not work, and how the forced development of heavy industry contributed to that.

Part 1: central economic planning and early Soviet reform efforts. Part 2: planning and organizational refinements in the GDR - an alternative to reform? Part 3 Soviet and East German planning systems - some comparative considerations. Part 4: the current struggle to eschew central planning.