continuous flow of people and ideas rather than just 

 products. Thus, they have begun to adopt a systems 

 approach to transfer, absorption, and diffusion that 

 "involves not only machinery and plants but also 

 training, management, and foreign expertise or know- 

 how. "128 while the more traditional style — limited, 

 once-off machinery purchases, a good deal of litera- 

 ture scanning, imitative development, and reverse en- 

 gineering — probably continues, it is being supplemen- 

 ted by, if not giving way to, the new systems-orien- 

 ted policy. 129 



Briefly, Soviet procedure for technology acquisi- 

 tion is as follows. Research, design, and production 

 facilities submit their requests to parent ministries, 

 which maintain special functional administrations to 

 handle imports and exports. The establishment may 

 have its own reserves of foreign currency to pay for 

 the acquisition, or it may apply for ministry or cen- 

 tral funds. In the latter case the requests are ex- 

 amined particularly carefully. Certain of the re- 

 quests, in turn, are forwarded to central management 

 agencies. Following selection of the desired commod- 

 ities and technologies, arrangements are made by the 

 responsible organs. The importation of products is 

 handled by foreign trade associations organized by 

 product line and subordinate to the Ministry of For- 

 eign Trade. Gosplan and Gossnab are involved because 

 imports must be accounted for in production and sup- 

 ply plans. The importation of licenses and other 

 "disembodied" technology is handled by Litsenzintorg, 

 also subordinate to the Ministry of Foreign Trade. 

 The GKNT is heavily involved in all decisions to im- 

 port foreign technology. Expected imports are incor- 

 porated in research, development, and implementation 

 plans in the same way as domestic technology. In 

 general, the whole foreign technology acquisition 

 process has been highly centralized. Only in recent 

 years have efforts been taken to break the tight mo- 

 nopoly of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and to en- 

 courage greater initiative by the ministries and low- 

 er-level facilities. 



154 



