The 'Showpiece' of CMEA Integration: Reconsidering the Soyuz Pipeline

• In Event: The Promises of Infrastructure I: Imagining Isolation and Integration

Abstract

Scholars have pointed to the Soyuz pipeline as a “showpiece” of CMEA integration, suggesting that it served as a model of cooperation within the Soviet bloc. Commissioned in June 1974, the Soyuz pipeline transported natural gas from reserves in Orenburg to Eastern Europe. Drawing on archival research in Russia, Bulgaria, and Germany, this paper argues that despite the rhetoric of multilateralism, the Soyuz pipeline served as a microcosm of the contested nature of cooperation in the Soviet bloc during the 1970s.

Author

• Michael Benjamin De Groot, Indiana U Bloomington