Stalin’s Capitalists: American Business and Soviet Industrialization

In the late 1920s and early 1930s when Joseph Stalin, leader of the world’s first Communist state, sought to industrialize his largely peasant country on an unprecedented scale, he turned for help to those who had the most experience constructing on such a scale: American businessmen. The ultimate stated purpose of his industrialization program, however, was to end the capitalist system that those businessmen embodied. At the time, the Soviet Union was an international pariah, not recognized by Washington until 1933, surrounded by largely hostile states whose political systems Moscow was trying to subvert in a contest that both sides saw as existential. Despite this, it was American architects and engineers that gave the Soviets the advanced designs and technology they needed to build “socialism in one country,” constructing the industrial base that would one day defeat Nazi Germany.