298 
This demonstration of conflict of interest on the ocean between 
the U.S.S.R. and L.D.C. commodity producers is symptomatic of the 
ambivalence of the whole Soviet-Third World relationship. For in- 
stance, at the first U.N.C.T.A.D. (Conference on Trade and Develop- 
ment) in 1964, Afro-Asian raw material producers proposed that they 
should be assisted by means of financing and subsidizing arrangements 
which would, in effect, raise the international price of their exports 
of natural resources. The U.S.S.R. which, in its relations with Afro- 
Asian recipients of Soviet economic and military assistance, has as- 
sumed the role of a raw material importer (although it acts as an 
exporter of natural resources vis-a-vis Eastern Europe), reacted most 
negatively to these suggestions. It stated bluntly that: 
‘“‘aid through prices must not be effected at the expense of 
lowering the standard of living of the population of the developed 
countries’’® 
and that it was “unrealistic” to attempt helping tropical countries 
by tinkering with the world market price at a time when their local 
levels of production were still low.® In effect, Moscow was telling 
Afro-Asian raw material producers that, if they wanted to earn more 
foreign exchange, they first would have to learn how to work more 
efficiently.’ 
As against these considerations, the Soviet leaders have found it 
difficult to resist the temptation to act mischievously in situations 
such as the recent Arab oil boycott, which Soviet commentators 
cheered on from the sidelines, adding, for good measure, a suggestion 
that 
‘“‘an action against the neocolonialist monopolies [such] as a 
pool of African producers of nonferrous ores can also become 
a reality.’’® 
In the previous year, Soviet commentators already had invited 
Africans to use their agricultural and mineral resources to force the 
West into an active anti-Rhodesian and anti-South African stand.° 
However, it behooves the U.S.S.R. to act cautiously in this respect; 
while Soviet oil export prices to the West received a boost as a 
byproduct of OPEC actions, the Soviet Union, as an importer of 
raw materials from Third World recipients of Russian economic and 
military aid, cannot really welcome a ‘‘ganging-up”’ of tropical com- 
modity producers against all developed countries. Thus, it is 
noteworthy that usually Soviet broadcasts to such countries carefully 
enumerate the measures that would be really helpful to the LDC, 
other than a producers cartel, such as removal of customs duties 
(which, under the Soviet pricing system, is a meaningless step any- 
way), receiving raw materials in repayment for assistance (which is 
> Mirovaia ekonomika i mezhdunarodniye otnosheniia, August 1964. 
Komunist, No. 14, 1965. 
7 Ironically, inside C.M.E.A., where the U.S.S.R. itself occupies the position of a natural resource 
and energy supplier to its East European allies, Moscow has often complained that raw material 
prices are inadequate to cover capital investment in agriculture and mining, and that a higher return 
is needed in these sectors precisely because low productivity renders them expensive. Moreover, re- 
peating almost literally the complaints of L.D.C. importers against the high prices of Soviet machine 
exports, Moscow has protested that Czechoslovak and East German machinery is sold to the U.S.S.R. 
at inflated charges, without reductions for large-scale orders and without consideration of the fact 
that such equipment is qualitatively inferior to Western products and should, therefore, be sold at a 
discount. (Mirovaia ekonomika . . ., May 1966.) 
5 Moscow Radio in English to Africa, Apr. 3, 1974. See Jean Riollot, ““A Soviet View of the ‘Raw 
Materials Crisis,’’’ Radio Liberty Dispatch, Apr. 11, 1974. 
* See Jean Riollot, Ibid. 
