SELECTED CHARACTERISTICS OF SOVIET FOREIGN-TRADE AND IMPLICATIONS FOR THE FOREIGN-TRADE OF THE COMMONWEALTH-OF-INDEPENDENT-STATES

This paper provides observations on recent patterns of the Soviet Union's foreign trade in the context of factor endowment trade theory and two models drawn from the new trade theory. Empirical analysis indicates that recent Soviet foreign trade was not based on differing factor intensities between Soviet goods and the those of the rest of the world. Instead, the recent geography of Soviet foreign trade suggests that it conformed more to the trade in differentiated products expected under the new trade theory. These results suggest that Soviet foreign trade had developed in such a way that, at least with respect to merchandise trade, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) has a strong potential for fairly rapid integration within the group of industrial countries.