What were the international relationship impacts of the great depression in russia?
The great depression had a beneficial effect on the Soviet Union. It coincided with the policies of collectivising agriculture and the massive investment in industry – the first Five Year Plan. Why it benefited them was because agriculture was producing enough of a surplus to export, and the dust bowl in the USA pushed prices up. In industry the depression meant that buying machinery, and to hire the technicians to install the machines and train the workers. The closed economic system partially forced on the USSR and partially designed by Lenin and Stalin allowed the country to not feel the economic downturn that rocked the capitalist world. In terms of international relations it showed to a great number of people that there was a viable economic rival to the capitalist system – a planned economy. Communism seemed to offer solutions to the terrible state that many countries found themselves in. The boom meant that countries that had not traded with the Soviet Union now found themselves
