The International Fair of Plovdiv in bulgarian-czechoslovak trade relations in the middle of the 40s and in the 50s of the XX century according to bulgarian documents

Abstract

The article attempts to define the role of Plovdiv International Fair in the foreign trade relations of Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia – countries belonging to the same economic and political world in the inter-bloc confrontation during the Cold War. The period from the middle 1940s and the 1950s was chosen, because then Czechoslovakia was the second most important trade socialist partner for Bulgaria, which provided machinery, equipment and complete projects for Bulgarian industrialization. The study traces the gradual weakening of the importance of the fair for their trade relations with the increase of integration processes in the COMECON since 1956, when the international socialist division of labour was created and the processes of coordinating business plans were centralized. The analysis of the set problems is based on archival material not yet in scientific circulation, stored in the State Archives of Plovdiv, as well as on studies examining the Bulgarian-Czechoslovak economic relations for the period.