This collection of studies investigates the political economy of international relations between the Soviet bloc (the East) and the developing world (the South), spanning the entire post-Stalin era while focusing on the 1970s and 1980s. The works examine East-South relations from the standpoints of international trade patterns, financial transfers, military relations including their economic angle, interactions within the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and the international legal framework for trade embedded in the socialist offensive in international law. The chapters provide extensive bibliographies making this volume a handbook of great interest not only to researchers, but also to university students and the general public.

The author: Dr. Robert M. Cutler, educated at the MIT and the University of Michigan, is a Fellow of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, Director and Senior Research Fellow of the Energy Security Program at the NATO Association of Canada as well as a Practitioner Member of the University of Waterloo's Institute for Complexity and Innovation. He was an IREX Fellow at Moscow State University, Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Harriman Institute of Columbia University, and Gallatin Fellow at the University of Geneva. He has taught and worked in Canada, France, Switzerland, and the United States, notably as a Senior Researcher at the Institute of European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies of Carleton University. Cutler is editor of The Basic Bakunin (Prometheus 1992) and the author of How Soviet Foreign Policy Failed (ISCE 2013). His research articles have been published in, among other journals, International Affairs (London), International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of International Affairs, Problems of Communism, Soviet Studies, and World Politics. The author of the foreword: Dr. Roger E. Kanet is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and University of Miami.