The Soviet Union and the Bretton Woods Conference

Abstract

The article presents a first study of Soviet participation in the Bretton Woods process based upon newly available primary sources from the Russian archives. It describes the main stages of the process: internal preparations, actual participation of the Soviet delegation in the Bretton Woods Conference, the intermediate evaluation of its results and the final decision-making on Soviet membership. The conclusion is that Soviet participation involved an orderly bureaucratic process similar to that in democratic countries. The Soviet experts had a good sense of IMF and World Bank plans and their prospective effects on the Soviet economy. Their consistent preference for membership in both institutions was professionally sound and politically bold, but they were ultimately overruled by the Kremlin’s Cold War calculations.