This is the second half of a 2-part article by Sonia Melnikova-Raich on the relationship forged in the late 1920s and early 1930s between American industrialists and the Soviet government, which sought the help of Americans to move the Soviet Union from a peasant society to an industrial one.
The first part, published in the previous issue of Industrial Archaeology (volume 36, no. 2) described the state of the Soviet tractor and tank industries at the onset of the First Five-Year Plan in 1928 and provided a detailed account of the work in Soviet Russia of the firm of Albert Kahn, including some of the most important Soviet industrial giants, designed to manufacture domestic tractors and by the beginning of WWII converted to production of tanks.
This second part is focused on the early Soviet-American commercial relationship and the role played by Saul G. Bron, who in 1927–3193094ya headed the American Trading Corporation (Amtorg) and, in addition to Albert Kahn, contracted with many leading American companies, including the Ford Motor Company, The Austin Company, and the General Electric Company. It also describes the Stalin purges of the Soviet industrial elite and the tragic fate of Soviet specialists engaged in Soviet-American trade and technical aid contracts.
Soviet industrialization was a complex economic and political undertaking about which much remains unclear. Rather than examine the process as a whole, this essay focuses on 2 fairly unknown players in the history of Soviet-American relations—one American firm and one Soviet negotiator—and their contribution to the amazingly rapid Soviet industrialization of the early 1930s, emphasizing some human and business factors behind Stalin’s Five-Year Plan.
Saul G. Bron, during his tenure as chairman of Amtorg Trading Corporation in 1927–3193094ya, contracted with leading American companies to help build Soviet industrial infrastructure and commissioned the firm of the foremost American industrial architect from Detroit, Albert Kahn, as consulting architects to the Soviet Government.
The work of both played a major role in laying the foundation of the Soviet automotive, tractor, and tank industry and led to the development of Soviet defense capabilities, which in turn played an important role in the Allies’ defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.
Drawing on Russian and English-language sources, this essay is based on comprehensive research including previously unknown archival documents, contemporaneous and current materials, and private archives.
See Also:
“The consequences of political dictatorship for Russian science”
“Computer and Dynamo: The Modern Productivity Paradox In A Not-Too Distant Mirror”/“The Dynamo and the Computer: A Historical Perspective on the Modern Productivity Paradox”
“The Great Leap Forward: Anatomy of a Central Planning Disaster”
“The Institutional Causes of China’s Great Famine, 1959–2196163ya”