ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the organizational and legal expressions of the Soviet reformist and conservative perspectives on the scientific and technical revolution and East-West economic ties in the 1970's and 1980's. It presents Soviet organizational changes and the expansion of foreign economic relations, Soviet legal responses to the problems of managing foreign trade and the limits of East-West cooperation. Many Soviet policy makers and administrators have argued that the domestic development of the USSR is increasingly dependent upon contributing to and benefiting from the international division of labor. Western nations–some more than others–remain serious military, economic, and ideological adversaries. Capitalist contributions to Soviet modernization must therefore be carefully selected and monitored. Soviet spokesmen repeatedly stress that East-West economic relations should be "mutually beneficial" and based on "stable" and "long-term" ties. Soviet Customers, industrial ministries and other organizations, request that Gosplan include in the annual plan an appropriation to make a specified purchase abroad.
