Amtorg Trading Corporation

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The Amtorg Trading Corporation , also known as Amtorg (short for Am erikanskaja Torg ovlja), was founded in the USA in 1924 and represented the interests of the Soviet foreign trade monopoly there . Even after a trade council moved into an office in the Soviet embassy in Washington , the USSR used Amtorg's services for most of its US trade and advisory activities.

Due to technological requirements, US trade played an important role for the Soviet Union in the 1920s. It took place despite a fundamentally anti-Soviet position by the United States, which waited until 1933 for diplomatic recognition. However, even then they did not grant a Soviet trade agency the desired diplomatic status - accordingly, it did not materialize. In previous years, with the exception of the USA, the Soviet trade monopoly had been recognized by all major states. However, economic relationships developed even without government subsidized or secured loans, as was common in Germany .

Amtorg was the result of a merger between Arcos America Inc. and the Products Exchange Corporation and operated in New York . The largest shareholder was the Foreign Trade Bank of the USSR , the remaining shares belonged to Zentrosoyus (Central Association of Consumer Cooperatives) and two Soviet citizens employed by the company. The business purpose was to bring American companies into contact with the relevant Union foreign trade associations and to explain the procedures in Soviet foreign trade. Amtorg often concluded contracts for such foreign trade associations, but never in its own name.

Chairman

literature

  • Werner Beitel / Jürgen Nötzold: German-Soviet economic relations during the Weimar Republic. A balance sheet with regard to current problems , Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, Baden-Baden 1979, p. 134

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Siegel, KAS: Loans and legitimacy: the evolution of Soviet-American relations, 1919-1933. Univ. Press of Kentucky, Lexington 1996.
  2. ^ A b c John Quigley: The Soviet Foreign Trade Monopoly. Institutions and Laws . Ohio State University Press, Columbus 1974, pp. 90-91.
  3. ^ Amtorg Trading Corporation , in: Great Soviet Encyclopedia (A. M. Prokhorov (ed.): Bol`shaia Sovetskaia Entsiklopediia , Moscow 1970, English), Volume 1, Macmillan and Collier Macmillan Publishers, New York / London 1973, p. 362.  [ 1]