Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Dovern, Lukas

Titel

Investing In Socialist Poland: A Transnational History of Finance In the Cold War, 1944-1991

Ort / Verlag

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses

Erscheinungsjahr

2019

Link zum Volltext

• ProQuest

Quelle

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• This dissertation explores socialist Poland's ties to international financial institutions during the Cold War era. Revealing the extent to which individuals and institutions cooperated across the Iron Curtain, it challenges the idea of a bipolar world order as an all-encompassing description of international relations in the second half of the twentieth century. Studying socialist Poland solely within the framework of Soviet politics and the bipolarity of the Cold War omits a crucial part of its international history; the country's development followed worldwide patterns of globalization, not just the rhythm of superpower politics. This dissertation argues that the end of communist rule in Eastern Europe cannot be understood without considering the region's integration into global financial markets.While the topic of international finance falls into the realm of the economic, this dissertation’s approach is decidedly historical. It relies on material from archives in the United States, Germany, Poland, and Russia to offer an empirically grounded behind-thescenes look at the workings of global finance and its effects on international politics. The narrative focusses on negotiations of loans and the designs of international financial institutions, giving ample space to the little-known economists, technocrats, and bankers who crafted international financial agreements of great consequence. It makes visible the power structures embedded in these agreements and the specific relationships between debtors and creditors that they produced. Rather than a highly stylized depiction of past economic life relying on theoretic models, it offers a description of how Poland’s socialist system operated in practice, how it changed over time, how it interacted with the larger world, and how it differed from socialism in other places. In the realm of international monetary relations, for example, Polish officials often disagreed with their Soviet counterparts. This dissertation, then, highlights differences within the socialist world, showing that the Soviet sphere of influence was by no means a single monolithic bloc.