biblio-excerptise:   a book unexamined is not worth having

Techno-Bandits : How the Soviets are stealing America's High-tech Future

Linda Melvern and Nick Annin and David Hebditch

Melvern, Linda; Nick Annin; David Hebditch;

Techno-Bandits : How the Soviets are stealing America's High-tech Future

Houghton Mifflin Co, 1984

topics: |  russia | history | business

Relocating high-tech westernfactories in Russia after WW2


The forgotten story of how, after WWII, a large number of complete
high-tech factories as well as personnel were relocated from the occupied
zones, West and East,

The Germans devastated Russia - from Ukraine upto the doors of Moskow and
Leningrad.  In their scorched earth retreat, they went through territory
where 40 percent of the Soviet population had lived... no fewer than 20
million people died. 33

Under the agreement between the Allies a quarter of German industrial
capacity, now sited in the U.S., British and French occupation zones, was
packed up and handed over to the Soviets.  Poland, Czechoslovakia, and
Hungary were stripped of metal foundries, petrochemical plants, mining and
heavy engg assemblies.  The Soviet-occupied eastern zone of Austria lost $400
mn in equipment and plant. Separate peace treaties with Rumania and with
Finland contained contained clauses covering the relinquishment to the USSR
of equipment estimated at $600 million.  And in the Far East, following the
defeat of the Japanese forces, Manchuria was stripped to the tune of nearly
$900 million in industrial machinery.  -  p.34, notes #4

The world's first artificial satellite was no more than a tiny short-wave
radio transmitter linked to a thermometer and powered by a set of flashlight
batteries.  But from two hundred miles above the earth, and travelling at a
speed of 18K mph, its message was clear enough - the Russians had a lead in
the missile and space race. 35

Sergey Pavlovich Korolyov (1907-1966), was the head Soviet rocket engineer
and designer during the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet
Union in the 1950s and 1960s. Unlike his counterpart in America, Wernher von
Braun, Korolyov's pivotal role in the Soviet space program was kept a
closely-guarded secret until after his death. Throughout his period of work
on the program he was known to the people outside of the space industry only
as the "Chief Designer".

A victim of Stalin's 1938 Great Purge, he was confined for almost six years,
including some months in the notorious Kolyma gulag in Siberia. Following
his release, he became a rocket designer and a key figure in the development
of the Soviet ICBM program. He was then appointed to lead the Soviet space
program, overseeing the early successes of the Sputnik and Vostok projects.


amitabha mukerjee (mukerjee [at] gmail.com) 17 Feb 2009