The advice for mutual economic aid (short RGW, English COMECON - Council OF Mutual Economic Aid, Russian - ) was created on 25 January 1949 as socialist counterweight to the Mars resounding plan and to the OEEC in Moscow. The initial members were the Soviet Union, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. The RGW was (beside the military Warsaw Treaty) the economic union of the socialist states of Eastern Europe. 1950 joined also the GDR this alliance. Cuba, Mongolia, Viet Nam and Albania (its membership later "“rested"”) became members later likewise.

The RGW had on the one hand the task to achieve a better economic specialization and division of labor between the socialist states and on the other hand a gradual adjustment of the very different economic conditions. As consequence of the arbeitsteiligen specialization a mutual dependence between the USSR and the other RGW states developed. With the specialization costs of double industrial ranges should be saved. For example the larger penalty of the RGW states in Hungary (Ikarus penalty), the highest performance tractors and diesel locomotives in the USSR, fish processing ships in the GDR were built. The mutual economic aid specified in the name took place above all by means of the fact that the economically relatively strong countries (Soviet Union, GDR, Czechoslovakia, Hungary) supported the weaker (Bulgaria, Romania, Cuba, Mongolia and Viet Nam) economically.

The foreign trade between the members was completely in the logic of the planned-economy system characterized by bilateral contracts of several years. Although intended from the system, was not the trade between the members approximately balanced, since it was a little attractive due to the missing of the currencies to develop creditor positions in the foreign trade. The exchange was completed by the international bank for economic co-operation (IBWZ), based as RGW organ 1957 with seat in Moscow. Currencies were transfer roubles and gold reserves.

Specialization goods were assigned individual countries, which exported it into other RGW countries. With the end of the planned-economy system by the political circulations in Eastern Europe since 1989 the RGW dissolved on 28 June 1991.

The RGW is to be seen in analogy to 1957 the created Western European EEC as well as in the context of the development of the cold war and the two-camp theory.

In the west the RGW was often called COMECON or CMEA (after the English translation Council for Mutual Economic Assistance), in the Russian SEW.

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