The archive.

State ownership does not abolish conflicting interests, nor does political independence guarantee economic recovery. In this joint review, Richard Schüller tests Nicholas Clarion’s account of Soviet domination against the practical tensions of bureaucracy, peasant resistance, industrial investment, and Moscow’s foreign holdings. He challenges Clarion’s description of bureaucratic privilege as “bourgeois” while taking seriously his account of satellite governments powerful at home but dependent abroad. Turning to Frederick Hertz’s study of the Danubian states, Schüller endorses the case against economic nationalism while acknowledging the uncertainty of national-income estimates. The pairing offers a pointed comparison between coercive regional dependence and the costs of breaking an integrated market into separate national economies, without reducing their different histories to a single explanation.

Can European countries open their markets to one another without surrendering control of their external trade policies? In this 1949 article, Richard Schüller argues for a free-trade area rather than a customs union, drawing on his experience negotiating Austro-Hungarian commercial arrangements to expose the political demands of a common tariff. His alternative preserves national independence, but offers no escape from monetary reform: duty-free trade means little while individual imports still require licenses. Concrete examples—including American aid that obstructs sales of Italian tractors and Polish coal—show how measures intended to relieve scarcity can impede European exchange. The article distinguishes what trade agreements can accomplish from what depends on stable currencies, adjusted exchange rates, and governments’ willingness to relinquish controls.

Neither these schemes nor the usual tariff agreements have any meaning so long as each individual import transaction depends on the granting of a license.