Net indebtedness of Central and Eastern Europe 1970-1990

The economic failures of the communist began to show throughout the 1970s, as the oil crises of 1973 to 1980 exposed the Eastern Bloc's many financial instabilities. The 1973-1975 Recession in the West had a knock-on effect on the Eastern Bloc, particularly on Poland and Romania, as Western debtors began demanding repayment, imports into the Eastern Bloc became more expensive, and exports were no longer in high demand. Growth rates also began to fall further at the end of the decade, as the post-war economic boom ended. At the beginning of the 1970s, Eastern Europe's debt totaled six billion U.S. dollars; by the end of the decade, it was almost 80 billion. Although austerity in the 1980s did bring some measure of control to the Eastern economies, it only limited the growth rate of indebtedness across the region, which eventually rose to 110 billion dollars (over a third of which belonged to Poland alone) when European communism fell, around 1990.