Soviet subsidization of Eastern Europe: The primacy of economics over politics?

The level and distribution of Soviet subsidies to various East European countries, which Marrese and Vaňous attribute in their book Soviet Subsidization of Trade with Eastern Europe: A Soviet Perspective to political considerations, are explained here as, for the most part, the normal outcomes of the economic integration of a bloc with relative resource endowment differing from those obtaining in the rest of the world. The statistical methods used by Marrese and Various to calculate the subsidies are also criticized.