Aspects of Soviet Law on Joint Ventures, Foreign Trade, and Investment: A Bibliographic Survey of Current Literature in English

The following is a compilation of works from widely dispersed sources in legal, economic, and business literature, including significant pronouncements made by professors, practicing lawyers, business people, and students. Journal articles are the predominant genre, and we have found it expedient to organize the gamut of views represented therein into several sections. With the growing consolidation and maturity of joint venture practices, the trend in publication is moving towards monographs, legislative compilations, practice manuals, and lengthy theoretical works. They appear to be phasing out articles from their place at the forefront of research.

All the same, the reader eventually will discover the skeletal nature of even the most earnest investigations of the legal creature known as the joint venture. Clearly, significant strides in comprehensive information on operating a joint venture are tagged to developments in Soviet law pertaining to enterprises. Recent legislation on "small enterprises," Soviet-press musings on "joint-stock companies," and plans to privatize some State enterprises in connection with Gorbachev's economic over-haul program all represent strands of a more organized and law-based approach to operating businesses. Any great leap forward in joint venture studies at this juncture depends first and foremost on reforms yet to be put on line in the USSR.