Businesslike Communists: Soviet Finance and the Crisis of International Capital, 1919-1924

Advisors: Tarik Amar (Columbia), Vladislav Zubok (LSE)

"Businesslike Communists: Soviet Finance and the Crisis of International Capital" examines how the early period of Soviet diplomacy was informed by the larger economic debate on the transition into socialism. Diplomatic historians have analyzed the Soviet involvement in the Western search for international stability following the First World War as a political retreat, in which economics was a means subordinated to the pursuit of diplomatic success or international revolution. Challenging these interpretations by analyzing underutilized archival sources, this dissertation shows how ideological debates within the Bolshevik party on implementing the appropriate model of economic development went a long way into structuring the shape of Soviet foreign policy and its objectives in the early period.

D. Moore. “MAGNETIC ANOMALY”, a cartoon showing capitalists being pulled into the resource-rich fields of Baku, the Urals and the Donbass in Russia and Ukraine. Printed in Russian satirical magazine Crocodile, 1922.