The Politics of Soviet Foreign Trade

EACEFUL COEXISTENCE, Anastas Mikoyan declared at the 20th Party tCongress in 1956, is unthinkable without increased trade between the comSpeting economic and social systems. Writing in the American journal Foreign Affairs in 1959, Nikita Khrushchev asserted that coexistence can have a firm foundation only with increase in an extensive and absolutely unrestricted international trade. Consistent with these verbal admonishments the Khrushchev regime engineered an active, though highly selective, return of the Soviet Union and the East European satellites to the world market. Both the tempo and the scope of Moscow's trade drive have increased since 1955, primarily by using trade missions, trade fairs and industrial exhibitions, and locally established sales agencies as instruments of persuasion in securing trade agreements. Although still small in comparison with the volume of trade of the countries of Western Europe and North America, the growth of Soviet and bloc export-import volume raises important economic and political questions concerning the motives and goals of the Kremlin's new trade program. An inquiry into these questions must begin with the internal economic situation of the Soviet bloc

Customs union · Economic integration · Economics · Free trade · International economics · International free trade agreement · International trade · Persuasion · Political science · Politics · Scope (computer science) · Soviet union · Trade barrier · Trade volume · Law · Russia and Soviet political economy