nce of military power in Europe,
especially after West Germany joined NATO. In another sense it confirmed
the Soviet Union's political and military hegemony in all of Eastern
Europe.

The organization has two main bodies--the Political Consultative
Committee, which recommends general questions of foreign policy for
member countries, and the High Command of United Armed Forces, which
prepares military plans in time of war and decides troop deployments.
Both bodies are located in Moscow, and all its senior ranking officials
are Russians.

Bulgaria has bilateral treaties of mutual aid with each other member of
the Warsaw Pact. A multilateral agreement binds all the members to one
another in general and to the Soviet Union in particular. Within
Bulgaria Soviet officers serve as advisers at the division level and
formerly served down to the regiment level. Others serve as instructors.

Bulgaria was a charter member of COMECON in 1949. An economic alliance
among Eastern European countries, COMECON is the counterpart to Western
Europe's European Economic Community (commonly called the Common
Market). Other members are the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Hungary,
Poland, Romania, and East Germany. Mongolia and Cuba, non-European
countries, joined in June 1962 and July 1972, respectively. Albania
joined in 1949 but withdrew in 1961.

Founded as an outlet for agricultural and industrial products and as a
capital-and-labor market, COMECON, like the Warsaw Pact, binds its
members to each other and all of them to the Soviet Union. Long-term
trade agreements of five years are usually renewable at the end of each
term. It is estimated that 60 to 65 percent of the total foreign trade
of each signatory is carried on with other member countries. One of the
obvious disadvantages of the organization, however, is the absence of a
common market. Trade and commerce between the member countries are
carried out on the basis of preference and within the framework of
bilateral agreements.

Because the loose structure of COMECON does not make for effective
regional planning, member countries such as Bulgaria continue to renew
bilateral trade agreements within COMECON. The Soviet Union remains
Bulgaria's largest foreign market, accounting for more than 50 percent
of Bulgarian trade. Bulgaria also agreed to send Bulgarian workers to
the Soviet Union for heavy industrial projects.

Participation of Bulgaria on a regional level has been confined