In chapter I, Stalin's Lopsided Economy, we looked at the basic economic structure of the Soviet Union. Beginning in the 1920's, the Bolsheviks deliberately concentrated on an industrial-military buildup, at great cost to their peoples. After the war, the same pattern was forced upon the European satellite countries. Trade was reoriented away from the West. That did not mean that the bloc could do without Western goods, but the goal was to obtain those imports that would help the bloc become more powerful and less dependent on the free world. The Kremlin also sought to use trade to divide the Western powers and to increase the reliance of free-world nations on the bloc. These Soviet policies--not Western strategic controls--were the main causes of the low level of East-West trade as compared with prewar. Stalin, shortly before his death, made it clear that he welcomed the establishment of a divided trade world--he saw it as a boon to communism and a blow to the non-Communist nations. In chapter II, The New Regime and the Consumer, we described the new economic courses announced by the Soviet bloc governments after Stalin's death. They made a great fanfare about providing more consumer goods to the people and improving the neglected agricultural sectors. But their steps did not go very far, and the purpose was to benefit the state and not the people. They apparently were trying to ease internal pressures--especially in the satellites--by opening the valves a little, as they had done before. But they did not alter the basic war orientation of their economies and they pressed on with the industrial-military buildup. In chapter III, The Kremlin's Recent Trading Activities, we reviewed the so-called trade offensive--the various Soviet activities of 1953 and the early part of 1954 which seemed to show a livelier interest in East-West trade. The U.S.S.R. concluded more trade agreements, ordered consumer goods at a somewhat brisker rate, but also expanded its efforts to buy ships and showed plainly that its principal interest was still centered on the kind of materials that would foster industrial expansion. To help pay for imports, the Communist planners put manganese, oil and gold on the market in larger quantities than in recent years, though history showed that they had done the same thing in the past when it served their purposes. They also tried to increase their influence in Latin America and Asia.