Perestroika and the Third World

Abstract

The official Soviet view of the world economic order has in recent years undergone a tremendous shift, a shift from that of two mutually exclusive world markets - one "socialist," the other capitalist - to that of world economic integration and interdependence. Accordingly, its view of Third World development, the so-called non-capitalist path of development, has likewise changed drastically: a change from that of extensive nationalizations, import-substitution, regional cooperation and exclusive ties with the Soviet Bloc countries to that of tripartite (East-West-South) industrial cooperation and comparative advantages of international division of labor. This study is an attempt to critically explore the relationship between these two global turnabouts: the signal change of the official Soviet view of the world economic order and of the East-West relations, on the one hand, and its view of the development path of the developing countries, on the other.