Something Different in Soviet Exports
As told in chapter I of this report, the economic planners of the Soviet empire first figure out their import requirements and then decide what they want to export in order to pay for the imports. They look upon exports primarily as a means of obtaining goods which are more advantageous to import than to produce, or which they cannot produce.
In the present chapter, we have seen what sort of items they are currently interested in importing. Now we turn the coin over and look at the export side.
The most noticeable feature is that the U.S.S.R. in the last half of 1953 and the early part of 1954 introduced into free-world markets a number of mineral products which they had not sold in such quantities for some years.
These commodities included manganese, petroleum, and gold. All of them at one time or another have been among the major Soviet exports. Together with grain, timber, and furs, they make up the principal means that the U.S.S.R. possesses to procure the imports they want.
Why have the mineral exports been revived at this time? This leads us to the grain situation.
Grain has long been the Soviet Union’s No. 1 export commodity, and still is. But Soviet grain shipments declined precipitately in 1953. The United Kingdom, usually the main Western customer for this commodity, stopped buying grain on a government-to-government basis and turned the purchasing over to private firms. At the same time the U.S.S.R. apparently decided to keep more of its grain stores at home. The efforts to furnish more fodder to livestock, together with below-average crops and collective-farm headaches in the U.S.S.R. and satellites, suggest the motivation for this. At any rate the private British firms were unenthusiastic about signing large contracts at the high prices set by the U.S.S.R., and grain shipments to the United Kingdom skidded from $101 million in 1952 to only $10.1 million in 1953.
Although grain was far from disappearing as a Soviet export to the West, it became less potent—for the time being, at least—as a means of acquiring foreign exchange to pay for imports. This loss was only partially offset by a moderate increase in sales of Soviet timber to Britain and a big drop in the amount of Malayan rubber that the U.S.S.R. bought from the British. Meanwhile war reparations from Finland had ended in 1952, and deliveries of Swedish goods under a long-term credit agreement ended the same year. The Finnish and Swedish developments meant that about $80 million worth of goods which the U.S.S.R. had received from those countries in 1952 could not be duplicated in 1953 unless some other means of payment were created. All these events contributed to the reviving of some other export commodities.
How far the shift is going and how long it will continue cannot be predicted. Abrupt alteration in Soviet exports is hardly a novel development. For a time, around 1930, when forced collectivization of agriculture and forced exports of grain had induced famine in some areas of the U.S.S.R., the Kremlin opened the pressure valves a mite, heavily slashed the exportation of grain, and even bought some grain on the Baltimore exchange. That was a breathing spell in the midst of the first big Soviet push toward rapid industrialization. During the same general period, the U.S.S.R. found it expedient to force more production and more exports of furs, coal, and some of the same commodities now receiving special attention—petroleum and metallic ores—in order to get imports of capital goods needed in the ambitious industrial program.