Red Globalization: The Political Economy of the Soviet Cold War from Stalin to Khrushchev

New Studies in European History

by Oscar Sanchez-Sibony

Winner, 2015 Marshall D. Shulman Book Prize, Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies

Was the Soviet Union a superpower? Red Globalization is a significant rereading of the Cold War as an economic struggle shaped by the global economy. Oscar Sanchez-Sibony challenges the idea that the Soviet Union represented a parallel socio-economic construct to the liberal world economy. Instead he shows that the USSR, a middle-income country more often than not at the mercy of global economic forces, tracked the same path as other countries in the world, moving from 1930s autarky to the globalizing processes of the postwar period. In examining the constraints and opportunities afforded the Soviets in their engagement of the capitalist world, he questions the very foundations of the Cold War narrative as a contest between superpowers in a bipolar world. Far from an economic force in the world, the Soviets managed only to become dependent providers of energy to the rich world, and second-best partners to the global South.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Economics, Politics, Soviet Union, Soviet History

294 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Baffled by how good this is. Soviet foreign trade and diplomacy up to the late sixties, coupled w 3rd World emergence. The counterhistory to end them all. Not participating in the World Market game was never an option; go hard or go home (productivity stagnation). The Cold War was much less bipolar than generally portrayed; a preponderant US rode best the uncaring waves of the world economy the USSR failed to integrate with, though not for a lack of trying — it failed bc of inexperience.

Much more to come.

[Thomas Ray]

HF3628 .S26 2014 Memorial Library

[Anna Shuff · Rating 4 out of 5]

clear argument which was followed throughout