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Article ID: CBB043966994

The Soviet Problem with Two "Unknowns": How an American Architect and a Soviet Negotiator Jump-Started the Industrialization of Russia, Part I (2010)

Sonia Melnikova-Raich (Author)

IA. The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology
Volume: 36
Issue: 2
Pages: 57-80

URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41933723

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Factories Tractors Diffusion of innovation; diffusion of knowledge; diffusion of technology Industrialization Assembly Line Industrial archaeology 20th century Soviet Union Saul G. Bron Albert Kahn

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 two 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, drawing on his tenure as chairman of Amtorg Trading Corporation in 1927-1930, contracted with handing 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.

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Article Sonia Melnikova-Raich (2011) The Soviet Problem with Two "Unknowns": How an American Architect and a Soviet Negotiator Jump-Started the Industrialization of Russia, Part II. IA. The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology (pp. 5-28). unapi

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https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB043966994/

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