Československo-sovětská hospodářská spolupráce v první polovině 80. let 20. století

The period of 1980–1985 is considered the climactic phase of cooperation between Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union after 1968. In this contribution the author focuses on analysis of the content of commercial and scientific and technical cooperation between these countries. Utilizing newly-accessible sources from the archives of the Russian Federation and Czech Republic, he confirms the existence of a well-developed contractual, commercial, and scientific-technical basis for their mutual relations. The advantage of bilateral cooperation mainly inhered in the favorable structure of trade relations when the economically and technically advanced Czechoslovakia exported its machinery and consumer products to the Soviet Union, which was rich in raw materials, and exchanged them for cheaper materials and semi-finished products. The relatively successful scientific and technical cooperation was, however, confronted with the ineffectuality of applying its results in practice, which manifested in the ongoing backwardness of the economies of the ČSSR and USSR behind the advanced western countries, and the inability to convert into an intensive model of economic growth, which would have been necessary to achieve the higher standard of living prevalent in those lands.