ABSTRACT
In the first post-war period technological transactions with the outside world were incidental and sporadic. Thereafter the wave of technology importation from the West has taken place, culminating in the 1970s the most spectacular examples being the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Trade in technology has never been bulk business, it is only through the indirect linkages that it becomes so important and sensitive an issue for any national economy. The high share of machinery and transport equipmeny in CMEA export may also be to some extent attributable to its geographical destination. The most intensive stream of technology in this form is directed to other socialist countries. During the second half of the 1970s the share of developed market economies in CMEA machinery export was slightly higher than during the first half of the decade which may indicate their improved competitiveness stemming, inter alia from intensive imports of technology from the West at the beginning of the 1970s.
