Progressive
13th September 2002, 05:43
By George Blair
(Review: 4.7/5 by General Zhaoyun on 27-July-2002, Category: American History)
© International Copyright D.M. Lazarus, 2002. Permission is granted to quote attributed excerpts. Send a copy of the publication in which the quote(s) appear.
The Russian society & economy seized by the Bolsheviks was near total collapse by 1920. On top of the devastation of WWI, famine, epidemic, & civil war came uprisings by formerly pro-Bolshevik peasants & naval & military forces. In order to survive & stay in power, the new regime needed the help of Western capitalists, US capitalists in particular, who were always eager to give aid & comfort to the enemy as long as they could make a profit doing so.
The story of the crucial role of US & European business in saving & establishing the Leninist dictatorship in Russia has remained relatively unknown to the general public in spite of the voluminous documentation of the subject both in the academic literature & corporate archives. This is not surprising, since there are obvious political reasons for both capitalists & Soviets to ignore or downplay these events. The history of our time would have been very different if this collaboration had not occurred. This essay will sketch the outlines of this unholy alliance, & some basic sources & references are provided at the end for those wanting to research it more thoroughly.
The best-known US collaborationist was of course Henry Ford. Joan Hoff-Wilson notes that "Ford contributed substantially to the goal of raising Russia's industrial production 136% in five years & to the overall success of Stalin's Five Year Plan." The Soviets gained the right "to use all Ford inventions or technological advances patented or unpatented." By 1927 Ford stated that it was supplying 85% of all motor vehicles used in the USSR (including agricultural machinery such as tractors). Prior to Ford's involvement, Russian motor vehicle production had been extremely limited.
The Soviet electrical industry was another key area of critical US collaboration. General Electric was the major player here, along with the German firms AEG & Siemens, the Swedish ASEA, & Metro-Vickers, a company controlled by GE's British subsidiary Thomas-Houston. A New York Times editorial of 1928 stated that General Electric's contract with the Soviets would mean to the Russian dictatorship what the arrival of US troops on the Western Front in 1917 had meant to France - that is, that it would save them from total disaster. RCA (a large block of whose stock was owned by GE, & GE had directors on the RCA board) provided the Soviets with the largest amount of radio patent & engineering information. GE was responsible for the massive & crucial Dnieprostroy hydropower station as well as the Leningrad, Nizhni Novgorod, & Stalingrad power stations. GE electrified the steel, oil, coal, aluminum, & other sectors critical to the industrialization process. Amtorg, the official Soviet purchasing agency in the US, said that in the vital Soviet electrical industry, "the technical assistance contract made with International General Electric has contributed largely to the progress made."
In the petroleum field - another basic component in an industrial economy as we know it - Vacuum Oil & Standard Oil (which merged at the end of the 1920s to form Socony-Vacuum) obtained in 1926 a lucrative five-year contract for Russian oil. In 1929, the Anglo-American Company (representing Jersey Standard, Royal Dutch-Shell & Anglo-Persian) signed a contract guaranteeing Moscow 12.5% of the entire British oil market in return for the right of Anglo-American to buy about $20 million worth annually of Soviet oil at 5% below market (This contract was part of a monopoly maneuver between Jersey Standard & Royal Dutch-Shell to allocate markets & set prices everywhere in the world but in the US. It was a direct violation of the "Open Door" economic policy being pursued by US President Herbert Hoover).
Having sketched US corporate involvement in the most critical sectors of the Soviet economy, we can fill out the picture with a listing of some of the most important collaborators. European & British firms are also implicated, & German technicians in particular were present in the USSR in numbers about equal to Americans, but US companies played the most important role in the establishing the basic industries that assured the success of Stalinist power (Ironically, in view of later events, it was German companies & official advisors that played the main role in directly assisting Soviet military development). A complete listing of collaborating firms is found in Sutton.
Allen & Garcia Co.: Mechanizing Soviet mining industry.
Burrell-Mase: Developing & organizing Soviet oil industry, especially natural gas.
F.D. Chase: Supervising reorganization of foundries.
A. Davis, L. Bishop & Assocs.: Irrigation projects.
Du Pont: Constructing chemical fertilizer & ammonia factories (also used in munitions).
Ford: Transmitting the complete Ford technology to the USSR, & organizing production of motor vehicles, including agricultural.
Freyn Engineering: Planning & supervising construction of eighteen metallurgical plants & renovation of forty existing ones.
Foster Wheeler: Installing oil refining equipment.
Graver Corp.: Improving petrochemical production & refining.
International General Electric: Developing of entire Soviet electrical industry.
Irving Air: Developing Soviet aviation.
Lockwood Greene: Reorganizing & reconstructing textile mills.
A. Kahn: Factory design & construction.
MacDonald Engineering: Constructing cement plants (vital for industrial expansion).
Nitrogen Engineering: Providing & installing materials for construction of chemical plants.
Radiore: Locating & developing critical non-ferrous ore deposits.
Roberts & Schaefer: Mechanizing Soviet coal industry.
Stuart, James, & Cook: Mechanizing & organizing Soviet coal industry.
Archer Wheeler: Expanding & developing copper, nickle, lead & zinc production.
In the few cases where anyone has felt a need to address criticism of US corporate collaboration with the Soviets, one typical response is to blandly state that it was not only not a bad, hypocritical, or treasonous thing but a good thing, because building up the USSR helped assure the defeat of fascism in WWII. This line of argument stands history on its head, since a principle reason for the success of fascism in Europe was fear of the powerful Soviet Union. Without US corporate assistance to the Bolsheviks, they would either have gone under in the 1920s, or, if they managed to hang onto power, would have headed a much poorer & weaker nation that would not have been perceived as much of a threat. US corporations, short-sighted & driven by greed, thus contributed substantially to the rise of fascism & to the Second World War, & also are directly responsible for the Cold War & the tens of millions of deaths it entailed (Playing the other side of the fence, the Texas Oil Company, later known as Texaco, illegally provided the Spanish fascists with unlimited oil credits that enabled them to win their revolt against the democratically elected Spanish Republic - arguably a bigger boost to Hitler than London's handover of Czechoslovakia in 1939. See Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War, pg. 273, 357).
In 1972, in the depths of the US-Vietnam War, Armand Hammer, Chairman of the Board of Occidental Petroleum, boasted that he had just obtained "the biggest Russian deal ever completed by an American company." While US troops were being killed in Southeast Asia with Soviet-supplied weapons, Hammer was signing a five-year, $3 billion technical cooperation agreement with Moscow to exploit Russian oil. As easy targets like Jane Fonda & Daniel Ellsberg, who opposed the war for reasons of principle, were being labled as traitors by corporate interests & their surrogates, "respectable businessmen" like Hammer were getting rich (or richer) doing business with the Stalinists. Hammer was not alone. US corporations did business with the Soviets to the end of the regime, altho as a politically incorrect topic it was not discussed in polite circles; the patriotism of such entrepreneurs was never impugned, no more than anyone thought to bring charges of treason against Dick Cheney when his company rebuilt Saddam Hussein's oil facilities destroyed in the Kuwait War.
Western corporations profited twice with the Soviet Union: first in building it, then in combatting it, with no scruples of conscience either way. The same pattern may be repeating itself in the rush to trade with the People's Republic of China, another regime with no love for the West but what it can get in terms of economic help. Ten or fifteen years from now, when China is a world power, American youngsters may be ordered to go kill Chinese for peace. We can be sure that our corporations will take no responsibility for creating the Moloch. They definitely will not be doing the fighting, but they will make money producing the weapons for that war too. And they & their friends in Washington will publicly attack as un-American & a coward anyone who questions the righteousness of it.
(Review: 4.7/5 by General Zhaoyun on 27-July-2002, Category: American History)
© International Copyright D.M. Lazarus, 2002. Permission is granted to quote attributed excerpts. Send a copy of the publication in which the quote(s) appear.
The Russian society & economy seized by the Bolsheviks was near total collapse by 1920. On top of the devastation of WWI, famine, epidemic, & civil war came uprisings by formerly pro-Bolshevik peasants & naval & military forces. In order to survive & stay in power, the new regime needed the help of Western capitalists, US capitalists in particular, who were always eager to give aid & comfort to the enemy as long as they could make a profit doing so.
The story of the crucial role of US & European business in saving & establishing the Leninist dictatorship in Russia has remained relatively unknown to the general public in spite of the voluminous documentation of the subject both in the academic literature & corporate archives. This is not surprising, since there are obvious political reasons for both capitalists & Soviets to ignore or downplay these events. The history of our time would have been very different if this collaboration had not occurred. This essay will sketch the outlines of this unholy alliance, & some basic sources & references are provided at the end for those wanting to research it more thoroughly.
The best-known US collaborationist was of course Henry Ford. Joan Hoff-Wilson notes that "Ford contributed substantially to the goal of raising Russia's industrial production 136% in five years & to the overall success of Stalin's Five Year Plan." The Soviets gained the right "to use all Ford inventions or technological advances patented or unpatented." By 1927 Ford stated that it was supplying 85% of all motor vehicles used in the USSR (including agricultural machinery such as tractors). Prior to Ford's involvement, Russian motor vehicle production had been extremely limited.
The Soviet electrical industry was another key area of critical US collaboration. General Electric was the major player here, along with the German firms AEG & Siemens, the Swedish ASEA, & Metro-Vickers, a company controlled by GE's British subsidiary Thomas-Houston. A New York Times editorial of 1928 stated that General Electric's contract with the Soviets would mean to the Russian dictatorship what the arrival of US troops on the Western Front in 1917 had meant to France - that is, that it would save them from total disaster. RCA (a large block of whose stock was owned by GE, & GE had directors on the RCA board) provided the Soviets with the largest amount of radio patent & engineering information. GE was responsible for the massive & crucial Dnieprostroy hydropower station as well as the Leningrad, Nizhni Novgorod, & Stalingrad power stations. GE electrified the steel, oil, coal, aluminum, & other sectors critical to the industrialization process. Amtorg, the official Soviet purchasing agency in the US, said that in the vital Soviet electrical industry, "the technical assistance contract made with International General Electric has contributed largely to the progress made."
In the petroleum field - another basic component in an industrial economy as we know it - Vacuum Oil & Standard Oil (which merged at the end of the 1920s to form Socony-Vacuum) obtained in 1926 a lucrative five-year contract for Russian oil. In 1929, the Anglo-American Company (representing Jersey Standard, Royal Dutch-Shell & Anglo-Persian) signed a contract guaranteeing Moscow 12.5% of the entire British oil market in return for the right of Anglo-American to buy about $20 million worth annually of Soviet oil at 5% below market (This contract was part of a monopoly maneuver between Jersey Standard & Royal Dutch-Shell to allocate markets & set prices everywhere in the world but in the US. It was a direct violation of the "Open Door" economic policy being pursued by US President Herbert Hoover).
Having sketched US corporate involvement in the most critical sectors of the Soviet economy, we can fill out the picture with a listing of some of the most important collaborators. European & British firms are also implicated, & German technicians in particular were present in the USSR in numbers about equal to Americans, but US companies played the most important role in the establishing the basic industries that assured the success of Stalinist power (Ironically, in view of later events, it was German companies & official advisors that played the main role in directly assisting Soviet military development). A complete listing of collaborating firms is found in Sutton.
Allen & Garcia Co.: Mechanizing Soviet mining industry.
Burrell-Mase: Developing & organizing Soviet oil industry, especially natural gas.
F.D. Chase: Supervising reorganization of foundries.
A. Davis, L. Bishop & Assocs.: Irrigation projects.
Du Pont: Constructing chemical fertilizer & ammonia factories (also used in munitions).
Ford: Transmitting the complete Ford technology to the USSR, & organizing production of motor vehicles, including agricultural.
Freyn Engineering: Planning & supervising construction of eighteen metallurgical plants & renovation of forty existing ones.
Foster Wheeler: Installing oil refining equipment.
Graver Corp.: Improving petrochemical production & refining.
International General Electric: Developing of entire Soviet electrical industry.
Irving Air: Developing Soviet aviation.
Lockwood Greene: Reorganizing & reconstructing textile mills.
A. Kahn: Factory design & construction.
MacDonald Engineering: Constructing cement plants (vital for industrial expansion).
Nitrogen Engineering: Providing & installing materials for construction of chemical plants.
Radiore: Locating & developing critical non-ferrous ore deposits.
Roberts & Schaefer: Mechanizing Soviet coal industry.
Stuart, James, & Cook: Mechanizing & organizing Soviet coal industry.
Archer Wheeler: Expanding & developing copper, nickle, lead & zinc production.
In the few cases where anyone has felt a need to address criticism of US corporate collaboration with the Soviets, one typical response is to blandly state that it was not only not a bad, hypocritical, or treasonous thing but a good thing, because building up the USSR helped assure the defeat of fascism in WWII. This line of argument stands history on its head, since a principle reason for the success of fascism in Europe was fear of the powerful Soviet Union. Without US corporate assistance to the Bolsheviks, they would either have gone under in the 1920s, or, if they managed to hang onto power, would have headed a much poorer & weaker nation that would not have been perceived as much of a threat. US corporations, short-sighted & driven by greed, thus contributed substantially to the rise of fascism & to the Second World War, & also are directly responsible for the Cold War & the tens of millions of deaths it entailed (Playing the other side of the fence, the Texas Oil Company, later known as Texaco, illegally provided the Spanish fascists with unlimited oil credits that enabled them to win their revolt against the democratically elected Spanish Republic - arguably a bigger boost to Hitler than London's handover of Czechoslovakia in 1939. See Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War, pg. 273, 357).
In 1972, in the depths of the US-Vietnam War, Armand Hammer, Chairman of the Board of Occidental Petroleum, boasted that he had just obtained "the biggest Russian deal ever completed by an American company." While US troops were being killed in Southeast Asia with Soviet-supplied weapons, Hammer was signing a five-year, $3 billion technical cooperation agreement with Moscow to exploit Russian oil. As easy targets like Jane Fonda & Daniel Ellsberg, who opposed the war for reasons of principle, were being labled as traitors by corporate interests & their surrogates, "respectable businessmen" like Hammer were getting rich (or richer) doing business with the Stalinists. Hammer was not alone. US corporations did business with the Soviets to the end of the regime, altho as a politically incorrect topic it was not discussed in polite circles; the patriotism of such entrepreneurs was never impugned, no more than anyone thought to bring charges of treason against Dick Cheney when his company rebuilt Saddam Hussein's oil facilities destroyed in the Kuwait War.
Western corporations profited twice with the Soviet Union: first in building it, then in combatting it, with no scruples of conscience either way. The same pattern may be repeating itself in the rush to trade with the People's Republic of China, another regime with no love for the West but what it can get in terms of economic help. Ten or fifteen years from now, when China is a world power, American youngsters may be ordered to go kill Chinese for peace. We can be sure that our corporations will take no responsibility for creating the Moloch. They definitely will not be doing the fighting, but they will make money producing the weapons for that war too. And they & their friends in Washington will publicly attack as un-American & a coward anyone who questions the righteousness of it.