USSR and the World Economy

This volume provides research and analysis to understand the role of the former Soviet Union and its involvement in the global economy through the end of the Gorbachev period. It lays essential groundwork for understanding the issues and problems encountered in the contemporary marketization efforts to reform and overhaul the planned economies of Russia and the republics.

Various essays provide analyses of Gorbachev's foreign economic reforms and their origins; the relationship of the republics to the world market (highlighting their strengths and weaknesses in terms of their domestic economies and import-export structures); foreign trade reforms under Gorbachev; economic relations of the former Soviet Union with the EEC; and the U.S.S.R.'s changing economic relationship with the Third WOrld (Latin America in particular). A case study of a major joint venture project is provided. Also included is a chronology of foreign economic policy decrees shaping the market reform effort. The essays in this volume address political and economic problems associated with the integration of formerly planned economies into the world market system. This book will be of interest to political scientists specializing in international politics, Russian and Eastern European specialists, and economists interested in the area of the world once known as the Soviet Union.

DEBORAH ANNE PALMIERI is Vice President of Demographic Research Company in Los Angeles. She specializes in Soviet foreign trade, political economy, and East-West business, and trade and economic relations. In 1989 and 1990 she was a MacArthur Fellow of the Center on East-West Trade, Investment, and Communications at Duke University. Dr. Palmieri has served as Assistant Dean of the Graduate School at the University of Southern California. She is the co-author of The Dynamics of Soviet Foreign Policy (1989) and the author of many articles on the Soviet Union.