Foreign Trade Bank of the USSR

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The Foreign Trade Bank of the USSR ( Russian Внешторгбанк СССР / Wneschtorgbank SSSR) based in Moscow was the credit institution responsible for import and export transactions in the Soviet Union . It emerged on April 7, 1924 from the Russian Commercial Bank (Ruskombank) and on January 1, 1988, as part of the reform of the Soviet banking system, was renamed the Bank for Foreign Trade of the USSR ( Russian Банк внешнеэкономической деятельности ССRСР / Wneschekomb). Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, the bank has continued to exist as Wneschekonombank , a state financial institution of the Russian Federation .

In the year it was founded, the bank had seven branches in the Soviet republics , and its chairman VS Korobkow was keen to obtain loans in the United States . In response to a decision by the government commission responsible for the supervision of import and export transactions, Gosbank took over the international business in February 1926 and the branch network of the foreign trade bank was reduced. In 1927 negotiations were still being conducted with the Berliner Handels-Gesellschaft , but in May of that year Gosbank was granted extensive control over the foreign trade bank by the Sovnarkom in order to centralize its foreign trade activities, and it became increasingly dependent. During the German-Soviet War , the employees of the foreign trade bank were transferred to Kuibyshev together with those of the corresponding department of the Gosbank . At the beginning of the 1950s, the branch in Istanbul was the last foreign office to be closed, and the bank still had 58 employees. Things picked up in the following decade with improved foreign trade relations and new powers transferred from the Gosbank to the Foreign Trade Bank, in particular the expansion of loans to Soviet foreign trade institutions. With a new statute, which put the bank in a position to safeguard the state currency monopoly, the bank began to play an increasingly prominent role in relations with foreign partners. In the mid-1960s, it was mainly about Western European loans for the Volga Automobile project , in collaboration with the Fiat group . Loans were then obtained for natural gas for steel pipes, initially in 1968 with Austrian partners and in 1970 for the natural gas pipe business with a German bank consortium .

As the only Soviet financial institution, the legal form of a stock corporation was retained for the foreign trade bank, but nothing special, with a few foreign trade monopoly companies and the Gosbank as sole shareholders. The latter was supplemented by the foreign trade bank in its area of ​​responsibility of the state foreign trade and currency monopoly. It served to finance the corresponding transactions, handled all payment transactions in the import and export of the USSR, was responsible for foreign exchange transactions, which also included the exchange of Western tourists' money, and was the administrator of assets in foreign currencies for domestic companies and institutions. Her appearance as a gold seller on the western markets was important, important for the procurement of foreign currency with which import surpluses could be paid for.

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Footnotes

  1. ^ Heinrich Machowski: Foreign trade. In: Hellmuth G. Bütow (Ed.): Country Report Soviet Union. Federal Agency for Civic Education, Bonn 1986 (2nd updated edition 1988), p. 434
  2. ^ Manfred Pohl : Business and Politics. German-Russian / Soviet economic relations 1850-1988. v. Hase & Koehler Verlag, Mainz 1988, p. 129 f.