Economic Diplomacy of Socialism: Participation of Comecon Member Countries in the UN Conference on Trade and Development 1964

Abstract

In the early 1960s, in the context of decolonisation, the contours of international trade underwent significant changes, leading to the need to review the principles of international organisations in the field of economic development. To this end, the first Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) was convened in Geneva in 1964 at the initiative of the United Nations. On the basis of the archival materials of the Russian State Archive of the Economy, which are being introduced into scholarly circulation from the funds of the Office of International Economic Organisations of the United Nations of the Ministry of Foreign Trade of the USSR and the Foreign Trade Department of the COMECON Secretariat, the article examines the basic principles of the practical implementation of the economic diplomacy of socialism with reference to the participation of the member countries of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance in the UN Conference on Trade and Development in 1964. The united front of the COMECON member countries on the key issues of the agenda revealed serious contradictions in the camp of the Western countries and contributed to the strengthening of the influence of COMECON as an international organisation striving to make trade an instrument of economic development and to strengthen peaceful coexistence in the new realities of the post-colonial world order. Thus, the position adopted by the socialist countries during the conference clearly demonstrated the possibilities of economic diplomacy at the international level and gave the Soviet leadership every reason to use UNCTAD in the future as an important platform for defending the interests of the socialist countries, including in the struggle with the EEC for economic influence in the Third World. The development of the theme in question with the inclusion of previously unpublished documents from the Russian State Archive of Economic Diplomacy opens up a number of promising directions for research into the phenomenon of socialist economic diplomacy, and thus significantly expands the source base for the study of various aspects of socialist integration within the COMECON, including the mechanisms of economic decision-making at the international level in the context of interstate confrontation. The academic novelty of this study also lies in the fact that the participation of socialist countries in the activities of UNCTAD has so far received only fragmentary attention in Russian historiography.