Technology and Soviet Foreign Trade: On the Political Economy of an Underdeveloped Superpower

Abstract

This paper investigates how the USSR's trade in foreign technologies reflects its position as an 'underdeveloped superpower' within the capitalist worldeconomy. As a part of the world-system, the Soviet Union's political economy is reconceptualized here, using Wallerstein's world-systems theory, as the most core-like semi-peripheral economy in the world capitalist system. These concepts are used to explain how the Soviet economy has successfully escaped the networks of 'financial-industrial' dependency that characterized the Tsarist economy, while, at the same time, becoming caught in a new kind of 'technological-industrial' dependency in many areas of advanced technological production. Even though basic Soviet science is very sophisticated, the investigation concludes that political contradictions within the Soviet state and economic policies based upon the USSR's essentially semi-peripheral niche prevent Soviet producers from generating the industrial and technological infrastructure of a more highly developed superpower. The relative sophistication of Soviet vis-'a-vis Western technology is a growing concern of many academics, military analysts, and policymakers in the major OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) states. The comprehensive campaigns being mounted by Soviet military, industrial and state intelligence to obtain more Western technology is a serious cause celebre in many NATO capitals.' Yet, the purposes behind most studies of East-West technology transfer are one-sided. One group seeks to prove that technology transfer only augments Soviet military capabilities. Another circle looks at whether or not technical inputs from abroad promote or retard Soviet economic reforms. Other interests examine how Western technological imports might enable the USSR to seize a share of global hightechnology markets. Still others ask whether technological goods from the West qualitatively or quantitively improve Soviet industrial productivity and output. In this study I examine the broader context of East-West technology transfer, namely what Soviet trade in foreign technology reveals about the place of the USSR within the world economic system.