Blind Spots of Soviet Foreign Trade (1945-1991)

Seminars

Center for Economic History of the Russia Chelyabinsk State University and Laboratory “The World System of Socialism and the global economics” of the Institute of World History of the Russian Academy of Sciences announce the online seminar 

Blind Spots of Soviet Foreign Trade (1945-1991)

Date: 23 October 2020, working languages: Russian, English

Annotation: Studies of Soviet foreign trade in recent decades have greatly advanced the understanding of its structure. Today we know that the foreign trade of the USSR was formed under the influence of a complex set of ideological attitudes and ideas about the benefits in the "Marxist" political economy. During the Cold War, foreign trade was one of the main scenes of confrontation between the two military-political blocs, and at the same time, it was a field for pragmatic economic relations between potential adversaries. Many blind spots remain in the history of Soviet foreign trade in the second half of the 20th century: How were Soviet foreign trade plans formed? How did the settlement system function in the USSR foreign trade? How reliable are the foreign trade statistics of the socialist countries? What is the share of re-exports in Soviet foreign trade with the socialist countries? How were military supplies reflected in the official statistics? What are the specifics of data sources on Soviet foreign trade? This seminar was conceived as a platform for discussing the problems of studying the foreign trade of the USSR in the conditions of the Cold War. We invite specialists in Soviet history and economics to participate in the discussion.

Contacts: email cmeaconference2020@gmail.com,comeconivi2020@gmail.com

13 Oct 2020