Abstract
As has been shown in the preceding chapter, in most fields the Comecon countries are well below Western technological standards. Western technology has always commanded the Socialist countries’ respect and admiration, even though this has hardly ever been conceded openly. But up to the late 1950s these countries were not greatly interested in acquiring technology from the West. Their economies were not sophisticated enough, their development was primarily based on extensive sources (see Ch. ia, pp. 2–3) and the exchange of technological data within Comecon (which was free at that) largely met their current needs. Moreover, Western nations were administering a strict embargo on the export of advanced technology to the Socialist bloc (see Section e below). When these countries did obtain technology from the West, its acquisition was rather haphazard and in many cases amounted to downright poaching.
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A. Bodnar and B. Zahn, Rewolucja naukowo-techniczna a socjalizm (The Scientific and Technical Revolution and Socialism), Warsaw, KiW, 1971, pp. 158–9.
Some evidence to illustrate the delays. In Bulgaria the decision to buy a licence (from the Perkins Engines Group of Peterborough in the UK) for the modernization of the Vassil Kolarov Diesel Engine Plant in Varna was made in 1964, and it was assumed that the licence would be applied not later than 1968; the licence was actually purchased in 1967 and its application was not completed in 1972; in that year the plant was expected to be operational in 1973 (Eastern Europe Report, 11/8/1972, p. 35). In Hungary the time interval between the acquisition of a foreign licence and its practical application in production ranges from 1 to 6 years (Figyelö, 1 /3/1972, p. 4). In Poland, of the 87 foreign licences purchased in 1966, only 14 were applied within a year, 11 in 2 years, 23 in 3–5 years and 3 in 6 years or more; taking the period 1966–70 as a whole, only 60 per cent of the foreign licences bought were actually applied in production, and only 35 per cent in export production (Z. Madej, Nauka i rozwój gospodarczy (Science and Economic Development), Warsaw, PWE, 1970, p. 180; Rynki zagraniczne, 8/1/1972, p. 5).
According to a Soviet source, there has been a strong long-run tendency for the proportion of Western industrial exports protected by patents to rise. This proportion rose from 50 per cent in 1929 to 70 per cent in 1959 and to 75 per cent in 1962. I. Ivanov, Patientnaya sistema sovremiennogo kapitalizma (The Patent System in the Contemporary Capitalist World), Moscow, KpDIiOpSM SSSR, 1966, p. 63.
G. Adler-Karlsson, Western Economic Warfare 1947–1967, Stockholm, Almqvist & Wiksell, 1968, p. 15.
J. Chmurkowski, Embargo strategiczne (Strategic Embargo), Warsaw, MON, 1971, pp. 131, 135, 142, 143.
Quoted from F. O’Brien, Crisis in World Communism, New York, Committee for Economic Development, 1965, p. 148.
For evidence, see Uri Ra’anan, The USSR Arms the Third World, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1969; The Military Balance 1972–1973, London, IISS, 1972, pp. 30–5, 38–42, 48–9, 55, 59, 75–80.
N. Spulber, ‘East-West Trade and the Paradoxes of the Strategic Embargo’, in A. A. Brown and E. Neuberger (eds.), International Trade and Central Planning, Berkeley, U. of California P., 1968, p. 120.
Based on a United Nations source: Yearbook of National Accounts Statistics 1969, New York, 1970, pp. 133, 142–6, 149–52. The rates achieved over the period 1966–70 (by which time the Warsaw Pact countries had recovered from the stagnation of the early 1960s) were 7 per cent for national income and 9 per cent for industrial output, even as reported in a Socialist source: Gospodarka planozua, 5/1972, pp. 261, 264.
J. Erickson, Soviet Military Power, London, RUSIDS, 1971, p. 100.
V. V. Aspaturian, ‘The Soviet Military-Industrial Complex — Does it Exist?’, Journal of International Affairs, vol. XXVI, no. 1, 1972, p. 13.
P. Sager, The Technological Gap between the Superpowers, Berne, SEIP, 1972, p. 27.
W. D. Jacobs, ‘Soviet Strategic Effectiveness’, Journal of International Affairs, vol. xxvi, no. 1, 1972, p. 67.
Maria Hildt (ed.), Potencjal obronno-gospodarczy panstvo Układu Warszaw-skiego (Defence and Economic Potential of the Warsaw Pact Countries), Warsaw, MON, 1971, pp. 260–1.
T. Kamiński, Kierunki postępu technicznego w systemie gospodarczo-obronnym (Directions of Technical Progress in the Economic and Defence Sphere), Warsaw, WAP, 1971, p. 65. A useful recent treatment in English can be found in D. Holloway, ‘Technology, Management and the Soviet Military Establishment’, Adelphi Papers, Apr. 1971 (44 pp.).
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© 1974 J. Wilczynski
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Wilczynski, J. (1974). Technological Relations with Capitalist Countries. In: Technology in Comecon. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-01794-2_11
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