ABSTRACT
The structure of Soviet foreign trade was determined by the policy of forced rapid industrialisation and the institutional structure that was created to implement the strategy which was designed to ensure that basic economic decisions concerning production and consumption reflected the preferences of the ruling elite within the Communist Party. This process entailed strengthening the planning instruments that had been developed during NEP into institutions which not only influenced the level and structure of investment in the economy, but exercised strong central control and direction over a myriad of economic decisions that would normally have been taken at the level of the enterprise or the corporation in a market economy. The basic features of the centrally planned economy had been established by the mid-1930s and, although subject to numerous attempts at refinement after the death of Stalin in 1953, remained relatively intact until the system virtually collapsed under the simultaneous pressure for change from above and below in the late 1980s.
