Institutional parameters of foreign trade relations of Ukraine during the NEP period

The article is devoted to the study of institutional conditions and factors in the development of Ukraine's foreign trade in the interwar period. The characteristic features of the mechanism of state regulation of domestic foreign trade activities during the period of war communism are identified. The level of Ukraine's inclusion in the system of international trade relations during the period of the New Economic Policy (NEP) is characterized. The regulatory framework and the specifics of implementing the Soviet mechanism of the state monopoly of foreign trade in the 1920s are substantiated. The hierarchical structure and functional orientation of state governing bodies and the implementation of foreign trade in the USSR, in particular, the People's Commissariat of Foreign Trade, are analyzed. The role of mixed joint-stock companies and state monopolistic associations (trusts and syndicates) in the intensification and expansion of Ukraine's foreign trade activities is revealed. The specifics of implementing the commercial concession mechanism in the USSR as an attempt to attract foreign capital into the sphere of domestic foreign trade are determined. Attention is focused on the specifics of regulating and organizing foreign trade relations of the union republics, in particular, Ukraine, within the framework of a single institutional mechanism of the USSR. The system of methods and instruments of customs-tariff regulation of domestic foreign trade activities by the Soviet government is characterized. The features of the USSR customs tariffs adopted during the 1920s are analyzed. The level of export-import taxation of the main commodity groups is highlighted. The specifics of the practice of using transit duties on the territory of Ukraine are identified. Factors, parameters, and scale of smuggling development on the Ukrainian borders as a shadow segment of domestic export-import activity are determined. The directions and methods of the Soviet government's struggle against the smuggling business are substantiated.