The foreign economic relations of the Soviet Union took a very different course from those of the Russian Empire in the decades before the revolution. While world trade as a whole was depressed in the inter-war years, the trade of the new Soviet state was at an even lower level. On the eve of the Second World War, the volume of Soviet foreign trade amounted to only about one half of its level in 1913. The volume of exports reached the 1913 level of imports only in the single year 1931. During this period trade and other foreign economic relations were also marked by their instability. An important reason for this was the fluctuations in Soviet international political relations. It is also clear, however, that the response of the state to the effects of political changes on the prospects for economic relations with the capitalist world was tempered by a ‘love-hate’ relationship. The need for trade to acquire modern technology was recognised, but there were worries that international links could be manipulated by foreign business to the detriment of the Soviet Union. The import of foreign technology, and the effort to obtain adequate exports to finance this import, was a crucial if intermittent feature of Soviet economic development in the inter-war years.

Under Tsarism

The foreign sector played an important role in the development of Tsarist Russia during its modernisation push in the years before the First World War.