This chapter studies Polish and Finnish
traders' efforts to access the Soviet market. By analysing socialist Poland's
clothing industry and capitalist Finland's shipbuilding industry access to the
Soviet market, the study sheds light onto foreign trade practices of smaller
states that sought to increase their room to manoeuvre in an asymmetric trade
political situation. Agency of the smaller powers is analysed in three phases
of commerce: market analysis, marketing, and political lobbying. The article
focuses on individuals (entrepreneurs) and intermediate-level actors (Finland,
Poland); private businesses (Finland) and state-owned foreign trade
organisations (Poland). The chapter reveals that a sale onto the Soviet market
took place within a set of political, economic, structural, social and cultural
margins for manoeuvring. The rigidities as well as the loopholes of the planned
economy formed the structures in which the actors operated. The article studies
whether the two countries used similar strategies to sell their products to the
Soviet buyers. It suggests that their relative leverage was related to their
perceived westernness compared to the USSR and agility to respond to Soviet
demand. With successful business deals both actors gained, besides economic
benefit, also sovereignty vis-a-vis the Soviet Union.