The economy of the Soviet Union never reached this stage of development so planned its economy in financial terms throughout the duration of its existence.

Whatever its causes, the disruption has jolted the fragile economies of the Soviet Union's neighbors, all of which are struggling to foster free-market systems.

Each annual conference centers on a theme, and this year's was the role of a central bank in the emerging market economies of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

This may be the most delicious paradox of the space race: while the Americans, those free-market gladiators, assembled a huge bureaucracy and frog-marched their industry in a great mobilization, the ostensibly single-minded command economy of the Soviet Union devolved into a greedy squabble.

In addition to chronicling growing up in a family involved in the California aerospace industry of the 1960s, it also explores similarities and differences between the military-industrial command economies of the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War.

Despite common origins, the economy of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) was significantly different from the economies of the Soviet Union and other Eastern European socialist states, especially after the Yugoslav-Soviet break-up of 1948.