Date
5-1-2025
Department
College of Arts and Sciences
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy in History (PhD)
Chair
John Moore
Keywords
Soviet Union, Soviet industrialization, Five-Year Plan, capitalism, American, Henry Ford, Albert Kahn, Saul Bron, Amtorg, Joseph Stalin, Gosplan, socialism
Disciplines
History
Recommended Citation
Helf, Craig A., "The Rise of the Soviet Economy: How American Capitalist Corporations Helped Build the Soviet Communist Economic System" (2025). Doctoral Dissertations and Projects. 6894.
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/6894
Abstract
The aim of this dissertation is to examine the depth and scope of the relationship between American capitalism and Soviet socialism during the period of Soviet industrialization in the timeframe around the First Five-Year Plan. The research focuses on the significance of American involvement and how American corporations, personnel, and methods of innovation provided the Soviet Union a comprehensive and robust foundation to build a competitive economy not only to Europe, but to the U.S. as well. An important question of the research examines how two diametrically opposed economic concepts embodied by these respective nations partnered to achieve the goals of each enterprise while risking labels of hypocrisy and contradiction. This study does not intend to depreciate the involvement and contributions of other European contributions to Soviet industrialization, but does intend to expound on the completeness of American contributions throughout various aspects of Soviet society beyond a quantitative measure of capital investment. Limitations to research existed from the Russian perspective with limited access to specific primary sources of the period due to Soviet historical revisionism and evolving biases of the period and current geopolitical events in Eastern Europe affecting U.S./Russia relations. The study analyzes archival financial data and biographical historical accounts from key players from a political and economic historical perspective. The results will show how American innovation, technology, capital, educational and training concepts, and personnel provided the means to propel the Soviet economy through a controlled industrial capitalist phase to a socialist phase, achieving the goals of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin of rapid industrialization to survive and compete against capitalist nations. The Soviet government failed to ensure these gains were self-sustaining, creating a dependency on capitalism through its fall in 1991 and on to the Russian government. The significance of this study shows positive economic effects of oppositional ideological systems and explains the pattern of relationships the Soviets, and now Russians, had with the West for survival.
