Modernising Lenin's Russia
Economic Reconstruction, Foreign Trade and the Railways

This book reveals Lenin's dealings with Western business through a study of Russian railways.

Anthony Heywood (Author)

9780521621786, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 19 August 1999

364 pages, 27 b/w illus. 17 tables
23.7 x 16 x 2.3 cm, 0.7 kg

'This excellent book will interest scholars of soviet foreign policy as well as all who are concerned with early Soviet economic policy-making and the transition to NEP.' The Russian Review

In this book Anthony Heywood reassesses Bolshevik attitudes towards economic modernization and foreign economic relations during the early Soviet period. Based on hitherto unused Russian and Western archives, he examines an extraordinary decision made in March 1920 to import vast quantities of railway equipment. The book argues that under War Communism and the NEP railway modernization was vital to a strategy of rapid economic modernization, and provides the first detailed case study of the government's import policy. Following the histories of the principal contracts, it analyses Soviet foreign trade as a means to tackle domestic economic challenges. This book provides readers with a new perspective on Soviet economic development, and reveals the scale of Bolshevik business dealings with the capitalist West immediately after the Revolution.

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I. Towards Economic Reconstruction, 1917–20: The Birth of the Railway Imports Policy: 1. Prologue
2. The revolutionary railway vision
Part II. Trade and Isolation, 1920–1: Implementing the Railway Imports Policy: 3. Krasin's first results
4. Approaches to Britain and Germany
5. Second thoughts
Part III. Retreat, 1921–4: 6. The new order
7. Denouement
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], European history [HBJD]