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Information to Users INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand corner and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back of the book. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6" x 9" black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustration^ appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. University Microfilms International A Beil & Howeil Information C om pany 300 North Zeeb Road. Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 USA 313 761-4700 800:521-0600 Order Number 9238269 The American factor in Soviet industrialization: Fordism and the First Five-Year Plan, 1928-1932 Schultz, Kurt Stephen, Ph.D. The Ohio State University, 1992 UMI 300 N. Zeeb Rd. Ann Arbor, MI 4X106 THE AMERICAN FACTOR IN SOVIET INDUSTRIALIZATION: FORDISM AND THE FIRST FIVE-YEAR PLAN, 1928-1932 DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Kurt S. Schultz, B.A., M .A . ***** The Ohio State University 1992 Dissertation Committee: Michael J. Hogan Allan K. Wildman Adviaer Eve Levin VITA July 9, 1958 ................. Born - Great Lakes, Illinois 1979 .......................... B.A., Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, Illinois 1982 .......................... M.A., Miami University, Oxford, Ohio PUBLICATIONS "The Revolution Rearmed: Development of Soviet Mobile Warfare Doctrine, 1920-1941," in Historical Analysis of the Use of Mobile Forces bv Russia and the USSR, ed. Jacob W. Kipp et al (College Station, TX, 1985), 117- 57. "Vladimir K. Triandafillov and the Development of Soviet Deep Operations," in Soviet Armed Forces Review Annual, ed. David R. Jones, vol. 9 (Gulf Breeze, FL, 1986), 233-44. "Building the 'Soviet Detroit': The Construction of the Nizhnii-Novgorod Automobile Factory, 1927-1932," 49 Slavic Review (Summer 1990): 200-12. FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: History ii TABLE OF CONTENTS VITA ......................................................... ii INTRODUCTION ............................................... 1 CHAPTER I The American Factor in Soviet Industrial Development.. ................... 13 CHAPTER II Americanism, Fordism, and Bolshevism in the Five-Year P l a n ..................... 4 5 CHAPTER III The Soviet Search for American Technical Assistance ...................... 7 5 CHAPTER IV The Changelings: Tractors, Autos, and the Debasement of Fordism ................. 132 CHAPTER V East Meets West? Soviet Realities and the Irrelevance of American Technique .... 191 CHAPTER VI Forced Labor, Forced Exports, and the Demise of Soviet-American Trade . 224 CONCLUSION ...............................................289 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................. 303 iii INTRODUCTION When I first began working on this study in 1985, I set out to explore the history of the diplomatic and economic relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union during the First Five-Year Plan of 1928-1932. My major task, I thought, would be to explain the role that American business played in the USSR's unprecedented drive to create an industrial economy in a relatively brief span of time. Much has changed in the intervening years, and the study that follows bears little resemblance to what I thought would result from my research. Although the actions of the U.S. government and American businesses and engineers had a great impact on the execution of the Five-Year Plan, the following study concentrates on developments within the Soviet Union; specifically, on the Soviet leadership's effort to modernize the Soviet economy and society along American lines. One focus is on the technical-assistance agreements that Soviet industrial organizations concluded with American businesses in the late 1920s. These agreements gave the Soviet economy access to the latest word in technology and formed the primary conduit through which American machinery and expertise flowed into the USSR. But 1 2 they also were an essential component in a larger effort on the part of Soviet leaders to import a set of industrial and work-related attitudes and practices which they regarded as peculiarly American. The First Five-Year Plan of Development of the National Economy set out an aggressive modernization program designed to transform an overwhelmingly agrarian, peasant- based country into a modern industrial society. American technical assistance would be one of the significant agents of change, for by creating an industrial economy on the basis of American technology and American technique, Soviet leaders hoped that American attitudes would follow in their wake. Several historians have noted the role that American technology played in the industrialization drive of the interwar era, but they have discussed it purely as a practical manifestation of the Soviet government's desire to industrialize as quickly as possible.1 To me, much more interesting is the less tangible motive that underlay the Soviet turn toward America: the desire to replicate the American experience of transforming an agrarian economy into the most efficient and innovative industrial economy the world had ever seen, which itself required imbuing a rural population with a host of values and customs quite alien to the traditional rhythms of agrarian life. These motives suffused Soviet policy toward trade with the United States, and we cannot understand that effort unless we understand the Soviet leadership's view of American industrial culture and their efforts to adapt it to Soviet society. The emphasis in this study falls not on Stalin, the Politburo, or the supreme economic policymaking bodies but instead on the economic executive agencies at the secondary, regional, and local levels of the Soviet government. Economic commissariats at the national and Union Republic levels, sprawling industrial and construction trusts, and literally thousands of factory directors and technical specialists exerted a decisive influence on the formulation and execution of domestic Soviet economic policy and, as a result, foreign economic policy. My research underscores the great degree of autonomy that these agencies and groups enjoyed in their roles as chief executors of Moscow's directives. In the first two chapters of this study I explore the economic, political, and intellectual backdrop of Soviet policy. Although the First Five-Year Plan was designed in part to create an industrial economy independent of the global capitalist economy, it was predicated upon extensive trade. Moscow's emphasis on rapid industrialization required massive importations of machinery and know-how, and this costly program in turn demanded considerable selling on world markets. Throughout the Five-Year Plan, Germany would be the Soviet Union's main trading partner, but Soviet leaders' admiration of America's industrial prowess and their fascination with American technique meant that special attention would be given to involving Americans in the industrialization drive. Much of Chapter I discusses the two main obstacles that Soviet planners encountered as they sought to convince American businessmen to deal with them on favorable terms: the U.S. government's refusal to recognize the government in Moscow and the suspicion with which most American businessmen regarded the Bolshevik regime in Moscow. I discuss in Chapter II why, despite those obstacles, America remained in the minds of Soviet leaders a respectable, even desirable trading partner. At first glance it might seem contradictory that a cabal of Marxist revolutionaries intent upon creating communism in Russia and devoted to overthrowing capitalism abroad would champion American industrial achievements and urge their compatriots to study and learn from American technique. In the second chapter I try to explain how this attitude was a logical outgrowth of the Soviet leadership's ideology and world view. To Bolsheviks, capitalism was a natural, necessary stage in the world's inexorable march toward socialism. Having come to power in an overwhelmingly agrarian society, the Communist party under Joseph Stalin's leadership used the First Five-Year Plan as a kind of whip to force the pace of the march toward the future; however, this did not mean that the very real achievements of capitalism, particularly in the realm of technology, could be overlooked or bypassed. Much could be saved from capitalism's legacy, and for Soviet leaders the richest trove of heirlooms could be found in the United States, where industry and technology had reached
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