ABSTRACT
The Bolsheviks came to power in late 1917 and shortly after the Russian Civil War Soviet Russia was formally transformed into the USSR. The USSR was relatively isolated diplomatically and her trade relations with the outside world were very limited, even in comparison with the foreign trade conducted by Tsarist Russia. The estrangement between Russia and the West was not only based on the establishment of one party state Communism, but was to a certain extent present long before. In World War I, Imperial Russia became a useful ally to the Western Entente Powers in their common struggle against the Central Powers. The backwardness of Tsarist Russia contributed greatly to her ultimate defeat in the war. During the First Five Year Plan of the late 1920s and the early 1930s, the Soviets intensified foreign trade with the West, in order to gain capital equipment and know-how from the industrially more advanced West.
