The Unbearable Lightness of Liberalism: The Soviet State and the Idea of Global Trade

Abstract This article examines the Soviet state’s contribution to the liberalization of international trade from the mid-1960s to the late 1970s. Looking at the USSR’s participation in the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the UN agency dedicated to trade liberalization, the article reveals the Soviet state as an actor that pursued multiple and often contradictory goals at once. The purpose of the article is to complicate the view of the Soviet state as a “liberal subject,” an actor that always sought its self-interest. It calls for historians of the Soviet state to engage with the political, ideational, and emotional dimensions of economic exchanges to investigate the USSR’s place in the global economy.