Technology Transfer And Translation

Before I get to the actual topic, a disclaimer: today’s blog post discusses the Stalin-era Soviet Union. The fact that I am discussing technology transfer from the US to the USSR in that period does not mean I am expressing support for Stalin or any actions taken by the Soviet government, any more than discussing the built environment of New York in the 1890s means I am expressing support for Gilded-Age social policies in the US. The latter may not have been as bad as the former but neither are anything I agree with.

Onward, with three magazine covers…

American Engineering and Industry from May 1929:

Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that most of the cover is in Russian. That will be explained below. Meanwhile the text box at the bottom reads:

The bridge is the Bayonne Bridge, started in 1928 and completed in 1931, which took the title of longest through-arch bridge from Sydney Harbor and held it until the 1970s. The New York City water supply system was of interest at that time because the Catskill system had been recently expanded and planning was in progress for the Delaware system.

Next up, April 1933:

The big block of text reads:
100 Years of industrial development of the United States of America and world-class accomplishments in science and technology will showcased by different countries at the Second World’s Fair in Chicago in June-November 1933. The picture shows the House of Science.

The caption on the photo reads:

The House of Science is the newest architectural accomplishment at the Chicago World’s Fair. This building is designed to display scientific results from the field of industry.

The fair was the Century of Progress, with a theme of technological innovation.

Finally, May 1934:

The title to the left of the photo says “Trucks International.” The caption on the lower right reads:

International trucks are manufactured to carry weight from 2,500 to 11,500 kg, including the weight of the cab, body, equipment, and cargo. The International truck shown here can carry more than 90,000 kg of coal per day from the coal mine to the electric station.

So far, so good: the magazine title seems to accurately describe the contents. The obvious question is what this magazine was, as being published in New York in Russian and describing American topics is a strange combination. The answer is best explained by looking at the publisher, the Amtorg Cooperation. Amtorg was created in 1924 and through the 1930s it officially served as the official import/export conduit between the USSR and the US. As such it was connected with very large US companies that wanted to sell in the Russian market – such as International Harvester – and was the subject of much scrutiny by the US federal government. I have no knowledge of whether or not it served as a front for spying, as it was accused of more than once. That is an important topic in its own right, but it runs in parallel to the reason American Engineering and Industry existed: the USSR was technologically behind the west and people there were working very hard to catch up. In other words, regardless of what people with Amtorg connections may have been getting up to in the US, people in Soviet industry and engineering really were interested in what was going on in the US. This is a good place to note that “Fordism” – i.e. the modern factory system developed in the US – was of great interest in the USSR specifically because it required fewer skilled laborers than the equivalent older European systems.

In short, the magazine was a quite public method of encouraging technology transfer from the US to the USSR. It ran from 1924, the beginning of the Stalin era and the year Amtorg was formed, until 1948, when deteriorating US-USSR relations greatly reduced Amtorg’s importance and trade. In that role, publication in New York made sense, as the writers would have direct access to American companies eager to get to the Soviet market and to people familiar with the topics of interest to the Soviet audience. And publication in Russian was simply a statement of who the readers were.

Interestingly, it’s a bit hard to find it today in the US. The Library of Congress has it possibly complete, the New York Public Library has a partial collection, and Hathi Trust, my go-to for obscure magazines, does not have it at all. I assume it’s available in some Russian libraries somewhere, but I don’t expect that will ever mean anything to me personally. Of course, I don’t read Russian, so I’d need help to see what the articles say, but I do love the Constructivist artwork of the covers.