The “new world economic order” and the cold war: a view from the USSR (mid 1940's - mid 1960's)

The article examines the issue of the USSR’s participation / non-participation in building a new system of the world economic order after World War II with the participation of other key countries of the Western world based on the unpublished documents of two Russian archives - WUA Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation and RGANI. The nuances of Soviet diplomacy are discussed in detail at a conference in Bretton Woods; for the first time, the chronology of key discussions of the Soviet side is built. The author shows that the temporary refusal of the USSR to sign the Bretton Woods agreements did not mean a final refusal of economic cooperation with the West. Soviet experts discussed this topic until the beginning of 1947. The fundamentally new thesis is that in 1965 the USSR again received an invitation to take part in the Asian Development Bank, a transregional organization with global participation. However, the geopolitical situation in Southeast Asia did not allow entering through the bank into the system of the Bretton Woods institutions from the back door. The author comes to the conclusion that even without entering the official Bretton Woods institutions, the USSR influenced the world economy, influencing the Third World countries and participating in the development of the institutions of the New International Economic Order of the 1960s – 1970s, such as United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).