Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development: 1930-1945

Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development #2

by Antony Cyril Sutton

1 HARDCOVER BOOK WITH DUST COVER

Genres: History, Economics, Nonfiction

401 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

Anthony Sutton was a research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, from 1968 to 1973. He is a former economics professor at California State University Los Angeles. He was born in London in 1925 and educated at the universities of London, Gottingen and California with a D.Sc. degree from University of Southampton, England.

Reviews

[Arvydas · Rating 3 out of 5]

How the West Forged the Red Hammer: Sutton’s Cold War Autopsy

Unmasking the Bankers, Builders, and Backroom Deals Behind the Soviet War Machine (1930–1945)

Antony C. Sutton’s trilogy — and particularly this 1930–1945 volume — is a devastating, data-heavy indictment of how the US and European industrial elite systematically built the Soviet Union. While the Cold War narrative sold us a story of capitalist freedom vs. communist tyranny, Sutton exposes the hidden third rail: a coordinated transfer of Western tech, tools, and capital to the USSR.

KEY THEMES & TAKEAWAYS

1. INDUSTRIALIZATION WAS IMPORTED — NOT INDIGENOUS

Sutton shows the USSR’s rapid industrial growth wasn’t Soviet ingenuity — it was powered by massive imports of Western machinery, engineering know-how, and entire turnkey plants.
• Over 95% of Soviet machine tools in the 1930s were imported from the West.
• By 1937, over 40% of Soviet electric power equipment was of American origin.
• Whole factories were built by Western firms — Ford, General Electric, RCA, DuPont, Alcoa, General Motors, and Austin.

2. WAR TECHNOLOGY & MILITARY BUILD-UP

The Soviets’ war-fighting capacity in WWII? Engineered with Western help.
• Gorky Automobile Plant (GAZ), designed and built by Ford Motor Company, became the core of Soviet military truck production.
• Aviation: The Moscow aircraft plant was built with US tooling and expertise.
• Naval tech: British and German firms helped construct warship yards and supplied critical precision components.

Even T-34 tank production was backed by American-supplied machine tools and technical blueprints for metallurgy and casting.

3. KEY FIGURES & FACILITATORS
• Armand Hammer – Soviet-American liaison, oil magnate, money man with direct Kremlin access.
• Averell Harriman – Banker and diplomat; facilitated deals, operated as a key go-between.
• Herbert Hoover – Pre-presidency, deeply involved in engineering and relief efforts that opened Soviet markets.
• Anastas Mikoyan – Soviet trade minister, traveled extensively to coordinate Western procurement.

On the Western corporate side:
• Henry Ford — ideological sympathies aside, provided trucks, parts, and plant layouts.
• Kuhn, Loeb & Co., Chase Bank, and J.P. Morgan — deeply entangled in financing trade credits to the Soviet government, especially through Amtorg Trading Corporation.

THE BANKROLL: WHO PAID FOR IT?
• US Export-Import Bank — directly financed Soviet purchases.
• Anglo-American bankers — structured trade credits and loan guarantees.
• Rockefeller interests — linked through Chase Manhattan and oil deals.
• City of London banks** — facilitated gold payments and resource trades.

Meanwhile, Western taxpayers footed the bill, indirectly, via subsidies and WWII logistics (see: Lend-Lease program — Stalin’s war machine was flooded with tanks, trucks, aluminum, and food).

NUMBERS THAT BITE:
• By 1941, 1,700 major Western industrial installations were operating inside the USSR.
• Over 300 US companies were directly involved in Soviet contracts.
• From 1941–1945, Lend-Lease aid to USSR totaled over $11 billion (~$190B in today’s money).
• Soviet production of trucks went from 0 to over 100,000 units/year in a decade — largely via Ford/American tech.

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Top Western Firms & Their Soviet Contributions

1. Albert Kahn, Inc. (USA)
• Role: Primary industrial architect for the USSR
• Contribution: Designed over 500 industrial facilities, including major tractor and automobile plants
• Financials: Secured contracts worth approximately $2 billion in 1930s dollars (equivalent to about $250 billion today) 

2. Ford Motor Company (USA)
• Role: Automotive and industrial partner
• Contribution: Constructed the Gorky Automobile Plant (GAZ), pivotal for Soviet military truck production
• Financials: Provided extensive technical assistance and equipment under various agreements 

3. General Electric (USA)
• Role: Electrical and industrial equipment supplier
• Contribution: Supplied turbo-blowers for blast furnaces at Magnitogorsk and Kuzbass
• Financials: Engaged in multiple contracts supplying critical industrial machinery 

4. Universal Oil Products (UOP) (USA)
• Role: Petrochemical technology provider
• Contribution: Built hydrogenation plants enabling the USSR to produce high-octane aviation gasoline
• Financials: Entered into significant contracts in the early 1930s for constructing vital military-purpose facilities 

5. Ingersoll-Rand (USA)
• Role: Machinery and equipment supplier
• Contribution: Provided compressors and other industrial machinery; represented in the USSR by Armand Hammer
• Financials: Maintained ongoing trade relationships since 1918 

6. McKee Corporation (USA)
• Role: Steel plant constructor
• Contribution: Built the largest iron and steel plant in the world in the USSR, modeled after U.S. Steel’s Gary, Indiana plant
• Financials: Engaged in large-scale industrial construction projects 

7. Siemens-Schuckertwerke AG (Germany)
• Role: Electrical engineering and equipment supplier
• Contribution: Delivered modern equipment and technical expertise for Soviet industrial projects
• Financials: Participated in significant contracts during the industrialization period 

8. Metropolitan-Vickers (UK)
• Role: Machinery and electrical equipment supplier
• Contribution: Provided machinery and technical assistance across various sectors
• Financials: Involved in multiple technical-assistance agreements 

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Financial Backers & Facilitators
• Amtorg Trading Corporation (USA): Functioned as the Soviet Union’s purchasing agency in the United States, facilitating numerous contracts and technology transfers
• Arcos Ltd. (UK): Served as the Soviet trade mission in the United Kingdom, instrumental in securing British industrial support 
• Export-Import Bank of the United States: Provided financial support for Soviet purchases of American goods and services
• Chase Bank and J.P. Morgan: Engaged in financing trade credits and facilitating financial transactions between Western firms and the Soviet government 

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Impact Summary
• Industrial Sectors Affected: Out of 44 industrial sectors analyzed, 43 received some form of Western technological assistance 
• Machine Tools: Approximately 300,000 high-quality foreign machine tools were imported between 1929 and 1940 
• Oil Refineries: By 1945, 77% of Soviet oil refineries were built with foreign design and construction, and an additional 22% with Soviet construction using foreign design 
• Automotive and Tractor Plants: Multiple plants, including those in Stalingrad and Gorky, were established with Western assistance, significantly boosting Soviet vehicle production 

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SUTTON’S THESIS:

Sutton doesn’t claim a wild conspiracy — he documents a coordinated policy of using Soviet Russia as a controlled industrial experiment. Why?
To create controlled opposition, manage global power balance, and keep both East and West dependent on jewish capital.

This isn’t capitalism vs. communism. It’s technocratic chess, with bankers and industrialists playing both sides.

Sutton scientifically proves that jewish capital literally built the USSR and supplied it with nuclear bomb technology.

"Capitalism and Communism are identical," Sutton says, a truth we are discovering today, to our consternation.

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Brilliant. Blunt. Buried.
Sutton’s work was suppressed, ignored by mainstream academia, and actively stonewalled by the establishment. Why?
Because it names names. And it quantifies betrayal.

For anyone with a spine and a brain, this book is a cold, sobering slap to the “official history.”
Forget ideologies. Follow the machines, the blueprints, the capital.
That’s where the truth sits.

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[Jindřich Zapletal · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great overview of the Western (primarily American) assistance with industrialization of USSR from the first five-year plan to the Lend-Lease period. To me, it was useful primarily as a data mine, a great way to improve my understanding of many industrial processes, US industrial giants of the 30's, and Russian historical geography. The book has obvious weaknesses: the author compiled it without access to Soviet archives, with a completely static view of economic relations (USSR steals and does not develop anything, the West only loses in the exchange), without any explanation why the Western companies or experts may have engaged in this allegedly utterly disadvantageous activity, there is no study of the mass forced labor circumstances surrounding perhaps all the large investments, basic geography of USSR is nontrivial, yet taken for granted (Novokuzneck is confused with Kuzneck throughout). Even more significant, the meaning and place of the technologies under discussion is never explained at all, and for most readers the search for those will in effect double or triple the book's girth.

I do not have any nice names for theories regarding "long-term plans of the global elites" or whatever it was the author pushed later in his career, but it is true that the sheer extent of the cooperation subverts many attempts at simplistic compartmentalization of world affairs.