[ivan_gammel]

No. Soviet literature was intentionally translated and distributed abroad. That was the purpose of Mir, at least partially.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_Soviet_Un...

[jhbadger]

They only joined the UCC (Geneva Copyright Treaty) in 1973 though. That was less than twenty years before the USSR ceased to exist. All the works published in the USSR before 1973 weren't copyrighted in the West (it wasn't retroactive).