抄録
Until now the interaction of Soviet politics with the Soviet Union's technological needs has drawn little systematic attention, but the study of this interplay is likely to be more important in the coming years. There are two reasons for this. One is that the latent differences of “esoteric communication” about the future of Soviet technology and East-West trade can be found among Brezhev, Kosygin and Suslov. Another is that the way of the Soviet leadership's dealing with the technological problems tends to exert a powerfull effect on Soviet politics.
This study pays attention to the top three Soviet leaders' different assessments of “the economic and technological achievement of the Soviet Union, ” “the difficulties or possibilities of economic reform, ” “the introduction of Western technology” and “the structure of foreign trade, ” and to the change of power relations among these three. This study then attempts to analyze the domestic political structure of Soviet foreign economic policy toward Western countries.
The above analysis gives the following results:
(1) The top three Soviet leaders continued to have different views on the economic and technological achievements of the Soviet Union, the benefit of introducing Western technology, economic reform and the distribution of resources.
But General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev benefited from the foreign and domestic crisis which took place from 1968 to 1970, and in place of economic reform he put his program introducing Western technology into practice in the 1970's.
(2) This means that the domestic political structure of Soviet foreign economic policy can be explained by analyzing the Soviet leaders' assessment of the prolonged stagnation of the Soviet economy, the importance of accelerated scientific and technological progress, the difficulties or possibilities of technological innovation through economic reform, and the possibilities of greater reliance on Western technology.
(3) In conclusion, first, the different assessments between Brezhnev and Kosygin of the Soviet reliance on Western technology became the prime factor which decided the positiveness of each leader's foreign economic policy toward Western countries. Secondly, the debate on the subject of economic reform and the distribution of resources (consumer goods and producer goods) turned into a conflict between “horizontal” and “vertical” international specialization, and became the second factor which decided the content of Soviet foreign trade policy.
Therefore, we can say that Soviet foreign economic policy is decided by these two domestic political factors and power relations among top Soviet leaders.
