The enigma of Soviet society is nowhere more strikingly manifested than in its economic relations with the outside world. Western business people, even those with representative offices in Moscow, often describe their negotiations with the Soviets as a veritable black-box affair. Offers for purchase and sale are funneled into the bureaucracy, usually via the Ministry of Foreign Trade, where they are digested for very long periods of time. When a response emerges, little is usually known about the level at which decisions were made, and even less is known about the criteria that were employed to make them. In the abstract, at least, foreign trade decision making in the Western market economies is a rather simple exercise. An American consumer will purchase a Toyota rather than a comparable Chrysler if its price, expressed in dollars at the market exchange rate, is lower. The influences of governmental tariffs, quantitative restrictions, foreign exchange controls, "buy American" policies, and the like, are usually of only secondary importance. In contrast, the Soviet consumer, whether an individual or an industrial enterprise, does not generally have the authority to order the importation of goods or services. That authority is concentrated at the top of Soviet society and administered through a labyrinthine system of overlapping bureaucratic agencies. Furthermore, those Soviet agencies cannot respond to price signals in the same way as the American consumer can, because Soviet domestic prices and exchange rates are themselves set rather arbitrarily by governmental agencies.

This monograph is the outgrowth of areport prepared for the Conference on Legal Aspects of the Foreign Trade of the People's Republic of China, held at the Contemporary China Institute, London, on September 13-17, 1971. The Conference was sponsored by the Subcommittee on Chinese Law of the Joint Committee on Contem porary China of the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies, and Southern Illinois University, Edwards ville, in collaboration with the Contemporary China Institute, School of Oriental and Mrican Studies, University of London. I wish to thank the sponsoring institutions for the invitation to attend the Conference and the other participants for their comments on and criticisms of the paper initially presented at the meeting. To the extent possible, their remarks and suggestions have been taken into account in subsequently revising, expanding and up-dating the original essay. I also want to acknowledge my special indebtedness to Professor Victor H. Li, chairman of the Conference, for reading successive versions of this study and offering many helpful hints on how it could be improved, in style as well as substance. I trust I have made satisfactory use of this extensive technical aid pro gram.

Translated from the Russian. Edited and with a foreword by Serge L. Levitsky. A systematic and authoritative analysis of current Soviet legislation related to the organization and the mechanism of foreign economic relations under perestroika. Of particular interest to prospective partners in joint v