The Soviet Forestry Industry in the 1950s and 1960s: A Project of Modernization and Technology Transfer from Finland

Issue 52: Economic and social history. Helsinki : University of Helsinki, 2017.

Kochetkova E.

This book is a doctoral dissertation. It is devoted to technology transfer from the West (primarily from Finland) to the Soviet forestry industry during a period of rapid modernization under the rule of Nikita Khrushchev during the 1950s and 1960s.This dissertation examines the role that technology transfer from the other side of the Iron Curtain played in Soviet modernization from 1955 to 1964. How did technical cooperation with a Western country develop in the context of the Cold War? How and in what forms did Soviet institutions and engineers transfer technologies? How did they deal with more advanced machinery and new expertise? How did they apply the new technologies and how did Soviet domestic research develop? Did these technologies help renew machinery, launch new production and enhance the development of the industry, as expected? If not, why? And, in general, did these foreign technologies lead to technological modernization? In answering these questions, the dissertation sometimes refers to previous periods in order to trace continuities and change. 

Keywords: модернизация, инновации, innovation, трансфер технологий, modernization, история СССР, лесная промышленность, History of Soviet Union, technology transfer, forestry industry