On this day, 76 years ago, on January 25, 1949 (December 27, 1948 in the lunar calendar), the Soviet Union and five Eastern European countries initiated the establishment of the Council for Mutual Economic and Trade. On January 25, 1949, in order to compete economically with Western capitalist countries and strengthen economic cooperation between them, representatives of the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Czech Republic and Slovakia held a meeting in Moscow and decided to establish an Economic Mutual Assistance Committee. The first meeting was held in Moscow in April 1949. Headquartered in Moscow. Democratic Germany, Mongolia, Cuba, and Vietnam joined successively. The purpose of CMEA is to carry out economic mutual assistance, technical cooperation and exchange of experience on the basis of equality and mutual benefit. The initial activities were mainly in the circulation field, but expanded to the production field in the mid-1950s. In 1989, Eastern Europe underwent drastic changes and the CMEA disintegrated.