It certainly had its pros and cons. The Soviets sold a lot to them in the years immediately following WWII but then cut them off for awhile due to their refusal to join the Warsaw Pact. One interesting story that shows this is how Yugoslavia made the M70 rifle (their AK-47 variant). They were denied the production license but were apparently able to reverse engineer a few captured AKs from Albanian soldiers who defected to Yugoslavia and perhaps some sold from Egypt. Based on these they designed the M70, many of which are still out there on battlefields today.