Formation of the model of international economic relations in the context of the past development trajectory of the Ukrainian national economy

Abstract

In the conditions of war and post-war reconstruction, Ukraine’s further integration into the world economy and trade-economic cooperation with the EU, the USA, and other developed countries is a priority task. However, the Soviet economic heritage in the form of the extensive elements and forms of economic management continues to create obstacles to building a competitive model of foreign trade cooperation. And overcoming these obstacles is impossible without rethinking and evaluating the historical experience. The research’s aim is to summarize the determinants and structural-institutional characteristics of the model of Ukrainian international economic relations shaped within the Soviet economic system. The theoretical basis of the research includes the concepts of dependent development and the «track effect», which allow assessing the influence of the Soviet legacy on the modern economic processes. The research methodology is based on the systemic approach, and problem-logical, comparative, institutional, and statistical analysis. The author defines the institutional and structural characteristics of the Ukrainian model of international economic relations shaped within the Soviet economic space and outside it. These include the republic's lack of autonomy regarding foreign trade and its subordination to the state system of centralized export-import planning; absence of closed production and technological cycles within one republic and deepening of all-Union trade and economic integration; production specialization of regions according to the central interests; the dominance of trade with other socialist countries and the so-called countries of non-capitalist orientation; a high share of barter operations and compensatory cooperation aimed at strengthening the so-called socialist integration; and an active application of the policy of customs and trade protectionism in relation to countries with a market economy. It is confirmed that the place of Ukraine's economy in the Soviet Union’s division of labor and the system of foreign economic relations was determined by the republic’s political and economic dependence on the center and its subordination to the Soviet concept of building an all-Union economic space. This largely limited Ukraine's opportunities in the formation and implementation of its own strategies of foreign economic interaction and led to an inertial pursuit in the fairway of the post-Union political entities and economic agreements after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the first decades of Ukraine's state independence.