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Soviet Union [USSR] DEVELOPMENT OF THE STATE MONOPOLY ON FOREIGN TRADE
The government of the Soviet Union has always held a monopoly
on all foreign trade activity, but only after the death of Joseph
V. Stalin in 1953 did the government accord importance to foreign
trade activities. Before that time, the
Bolsheviks' (see Glossary)
ideological opposition to external economic control, their refusal
to pay Russia's World War I debts, and the chaos of the Civil War
(1918-21) kept trade to the minimum level required for the
country's industrial development
(see Soviet Union USSR - Revolutions and Civil War
, ch. 2). Active Soviet trade operations
began only in 1921, when the
government established the People's Commissariat of Foreign Trade.
The commissariat's monopoly on internal and external foreign
trade was loosened, beginning in 1921, when the New Economic Policy
(NEP) decentralized control of the economy
(see Soviet Union USSR - The Era of the New Economic Policy
, ch. 2). Although the commissariat remained the
controlling center, the regime established other organizations to
deal directly with foreign partners in the buying and selling of
goods. These organizations included state import and export
offices, joint stock companies, specialized import and export
corporations, trusts, syndicates, cooperative organizations, and
mixed-ownership companies.
The end of the NEP period, the beginning of the First Five-Year
Plan (1928-32), and the forced collectivization of agriculture
beginning in 1929 marked the early Stalin era
(see Soviet Union USSR - Stalin's Rise to Power
, ch. 2). The government restructured foreign trade operations
according to Decree Number 358, issued in February 1930, which
eliminated the decentralized, essentially private, trading
practices of the NEP period and established a system of monopoly
specialization. The government then organized a number of foreign
trade corporations under the People's Commissariat of Foreign
Trade, each with a monopoly over a specific group of commodities.
Stalin's policy restricted trade as it attempted to build
socialism in one country. Stalin feared the unpredictable movement
and disruptive influence of such foreign market forces as demand
and price fluctuations. Imports were restricted to factory
equipment essential for the industrialization drive that began with
the First Five-Year Plan.
World War II virtually halted Soviet trade and the activity of
most foreign trade corporations. Trade was conducted primarily
through Soviet trade representatives in Britain and Iran and the
Soviet Buying Commission in the United States. After the war,
Britain and other West European countries and the United States
imposed drastic restrictions on trade with the Soviet Union. Thus,
Soviet foreign trade corporations limited their efforts to Eastern
Europe and China, establishing Soviet-owned companies in these
countries and setting up joint-stock companies on very favorable
terms. Comecon, founded in 1949, united the economies of Eastern
Europe with that of the Soviet Union
(see Soviet Union USSR - Appendix B).
Soviet trade changed considerably in the post-Stalin era.
Postwar industrialization and an expansion of foreign trade
resulted in the proliferation of
all-union (see Glossary) foreign
trade organizations (FTOs), the new name for foreign trade
corporations and also known as foreign trade associations. In 1946
the People's Commissariat of Foreign Trade was reorganized into the
Ministry of Foreign Trade. The Ministry of Foreign Trade, through
its FTOs, retained the exclusive right to negotiate and sign
contracts with foreigners and to draft foreign trade plans. The
State Committee for Foreign Economic Relations (Gosudarstvennyi
komitet po vneshnim ekonomicheskim sviaziam--GKES), created in
1955, managed all foreign aid programs and the export of complete
factories through the FTOs subordinate to it. Certain ministries,
however, had the right to deal directly with foreign partners
through their own FTOs.
On January 17, 1988, Izvestiia reported the abolition of
the Ministry of Foreign Trade and GKES. These two organizations
were merged into the newly created Ministry of Foreign Economic
Relations, which had responsibility for administering foreign trade
policy and foreign aid agreements. Other legislation provided for
the establishment of joint enterprises. The government retained its
monopoly on foreign trade through a streamlined version of the
Soviet foreign trade bureaucracy as it existed before the January
17 decree.
Data as of May 1989
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