Historical experience of regional economic cooperation of the Far East of the USSR and Japan in the late Soviet period

Abstract

The article examines the main directions of regional economic cooperation between the Soviet Far East and Japan. The significance of export-import supplies, their raw materials orientation, features and differences between the economic systems that influenced the trade indicators, interests of trading partners during the late Soviet period (1965 - 1985) are investigated. The conditions of forestry and oil-extracting industries of the Far East which cooperated with Japanese companies on a compensation basis are described. The article analyzes the efficiency of export of products from the Far East to Japan, and outlines the stability of regional exports entering the neighboring state of the Asia-Pacific region. In a general historical context, the author pays special attention to the difficulties in economic bilateral cooperation, and analyzes their causes. The article describes an equally important area of the constructive international interaction between the Soviet Far East and Japan - coastal border trade, whose striking feature was exhibitions of industrial products. Along with traditional export-import operations, the advantages of this form of cooperation are analyzed. It was found that the factor constraining regional economic cooperation was the difference between the planned and market models of economies. The situation was extremely complicated by the underdeveloped transport infrastructure of the Far East, the inconsistency with the world achievements of the scientific and technological progress of the extractive industries of the industrial and civil complex, the financial and personnel deficit, rigid centralization, which hindered the initiatives of the local party elite in the matters of economic interaction with representatives of Japanese business.