Technology Transfer to the USSR. 1928-1937 and 1966-1975: by George D Holliday

Author:George D Holliday [Holliday, George D]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General
ISBN: 9781000313970
Google: _U2fDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-06-25T01:35:59+00:00

5.

Western Technology Transfer to the Soviet Automotive Industry: The Gorkii Automobile Plant

In chapters 5 and 6, a case study--the transfer of technology to the Soivet automotive industry--is used to examine the Soviet Union’s experience as a technology borrower. The automotive industry has been one of the high-priority areas of Soviet technology borrowing in the two periods of intensive Soviet interest in Western technology--the First Five-Year Plan (1928–1932) and the current period (the mid-1960’s to the mid-1970’s). The case study is intended to provide a basis for evaluating the hypothesis that the Soviet orientation to the international economy has undergone a fundamental change since the 1930’s. Specifically, Western technology transfers to major Soviet automotive projects in the two periods are analyzed in order to determine if there is movement toward more active technology transfer mechanisms, characterized by more permanent technological ties and more active involvement of Western firms in the Soviet economy. In addition, the degrees and kinds of Soviet technological dependence on the West are examined. The case study concentrates on three major projects in the Soviet automotive industry: the Gorkii Automobile Plant (built in the late 1920s and early 1930s with the assistance of the Ford Motor Company and other Western firms); the Volga Automobile Plant (built during the Eighth Five-Year Plan with the primary assistance of the Italian firm FIAT); and the Kama River Truck Plant (begun, but not completed, during the Ninth Five-Year Plan with assistance from a number of Western firms).1 In each case, the study will examine the forms of cooperation, with Western firms, the criteria for selection of foreign technology and foreign firms, the role of foreign companies in the management of the projects, and the degree of permanency of Soviet economic ties with the West. The impact of foreign technology on the industry as a whole will also be examined.

The use of foreign technology by the Soviet automotive industry has been in some ways typical of Soviet industry as a whole. The contractual arrangements in both periods--technical assistance contracts in the earlier period and various industrial cooperation arrangements in the 1960s and 1970s--were similar to those used in many branches of Soviet industry. Moreover, the rationale for borrowing foreign technology and the domestic environment into which the technology was transplanted were similar for the automotive and other Soviet industries. In the 1920s and 1930s, Soviet economic planners sought foreign assistance to transform a backward domestic industry, with insignificant production, into a modern mass-production industry capable of meeting the needs of a rapidly industrializing economy. In the 1960s and 1970s, purchases of foreign technology have been viewed by the Soviet leadership as a means of modernizing a large but in some ways inadequate industry, improving the productivity of capital and labor inputs, and overcoming the increasingly evident technology gap between the Soviet Union and the industrial West. In both periods, efforts in the Soviet automotive industry paralleled developments in other sectors of the economy.

In one respect--the scale of Western technology transfers to the Soviet Union--the automotive industry may be regarded as somewhat atypical.

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