Events

This presentation builds on recent “revisionist” histories of Soviet-West economic exchanges to illustrate how Soviet energy exports to Western Europe enabled the import of obsolete technology to the USSR, using the example of Italian Fiat at the Volga Car Factory (VAZ) between 1960 and 1980. In this “international division of technology”, while Fiat could valorise technology by-then rendered obsolete for world market production by competition, the Soviets could deploy it to sustain mass manufacturing of old car models at lower scale and standards than the international norm. This partly explains the inefficiency of Soviet industry in comparison to the West, and the ultimate failure of Soviet late industrialisation to translate into a process of catch-up development. By foregrounding the rent-financed character of these technology transfers, the presentation offers potential new avenues for research to link Soviet late development to broader debates on the role of technology and the dynamics of late industrialisation in resource-rich countries today. It also clarifies the commercial logic for Western firms to invest in such countries, as exporting aging fixed capital has helped to finance successive waves of automation and robotisation at home.