Беларуска-польскія гандлёва-эканамічныя сувязі ў 1923-1939 гг.

Abstract

After the peace treaty of 1921 Poland became the first foreign market opened for the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic. The trade rapidly developed mainly because of industrial production paucity in the Soviet republics. Poland took the share of up to 85 %> of the BSSR foreign trade. The republic exported raw materials (mostly agricultural products and timber) and imported consumer goods and industrial products. Polish tradesmen maintained transit trade buying Belarusian raw materials and selling them to the Western Europe. Therefore the establishment of direct ties with Germany and Great Britain resulted in a sharp decline of the trade volume in the middle of the 1920s. The BSSR also used its border trade with Poland for reselling the consumer goods further east. The republic quickly rebuilt the transit routes (railways, rivers and channels); however the problem of free transit was not completely solved up to the Second World War and trade was partially rerouted to Latvia. There were no concessions or joint ventures established in the BSSR by Polish businessmen, although several attempts have been made. The reasons were the geopolitical position of BSSR as the westernmost republic and constant political tension in the Soviet-Polish relations and also the weakness of Polish business. Centralization of import and export operations in the USSR in 1930s led to further orientation of trade not to the neighbouring Poland but to the developed countries of the West. With industrialization the structure of Belarusian foreign trade also changes, the percentage of the industrial products increases.