ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the bilateral clearing trade and payment institutions in the Finnish–Soviet relations and the impact of the bilateral trade on the development of the Finnish shipyards. By so doing, it turns the focus from the high politics to the role of allegedly apolitical trade institutions and trade administration in industrial transformation. The bilateral clearing trade and payment system coordinated roughly one-fifth of the Finnish foreign trade between 1952 and 1990. The high-volume and long-lasting bilateral trade system was the most striking institutional difference between the ship trade with the Soviet Union and the trade with capitalist countries. The Finnish shipbuilding industry did not only adapt to the dualism between multilateral and bilateral trading but embraced it. The chapter shows how the bilateral framework of trade became the single most important factor in the expansion of the Finnish shipbuilding until the 1980s, and on the other hand, how the real and alleged benefits of the clearing trade and payment system to the Finnish shipbuilding became the single most important reason for the trade administration to maintain the bilateral trade infrastructure.
