The first days of 1992 witnessed the final dissolution of the Soviet Union.With its passing came the end of over fourdecades of superpower confrontation and cold war.Throughout the period,Europe remained the central focus of superpower rivalry,yet the only “hot”wars involving the superpowers and their surrogates occurred far away in Korea,Indochina,and Afghanistan.The locations of these conflicts reveal asalient feature of the post-World War Two era.As the numberof newly independent countries grew,so too did the importance of the Third World as an arena for superpower competition.
Among the instruments used by both the United States and the Soviet Union in their relations with Third World countries was foreign economic assistance.Analyses of the objectives underlying the American and Western European economic aidprograms are plentiful.Surprisingly little research,how-ever,has been done on the Soviet program.Those studies that have treated Soviet economic aid activities have done so in mostly descriptive fashion or have embedded the subject of economic aid in a broader discussion of Soviet behavior toward the Third World.