The Roots of Empire and Industry: The Transnational History of the Soviet Rubber Industry

• In Event: Chemical Controversies, Rubber Quests, and Fiscal Dreams: Technologies of Power in Soviet Modernity

Abstract

Global rubber shortages and market instability in the early 20th century drove the United States, Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany to collaborate in an overwhelming drive to secure domestically producible sources of rubber, either from plants that could grow outside the tropics, or from synthetic rubber processes. The Soviet Union was an indispensable part of this converging, transnational “quest for rubber.” Russian scientists created the first factories to produce synthetic rubber, and Russian agronomists had discovered a dandelion in Central Asia that yielded latex suitable for manufacture. Consequently, both discoveries were disseminated across the world. Sometimes they were shared: the Soviet Union exchanged seeds with the United States during WWII, German and American chemical companies DuPont and I.G. Farben collaborated on producing synthetic tires, and Russian scientists involved in the synthetic rubber industry visited and even immigrated to the United States. Sometimes these secrets were stolen. German commandos raided the Soviet Union to steal dandelion seeds and grew them with the help of abducted Russian scientists at Auschwitz. After the war, the United States and Soviet Union split up Germany’s largest chemical company, I.G. Farben, dividing Germany’s resources, facilities, and chemists between themselves. This history supports a view of modernity as transnational, where the material demands of modernist agendas overruled different ideologies like communism, socialism, and capitalism that clashed over how to modernize. In the case of providing rubber, these differences broke down in the face of necessity.

Author

• Alex Craver, Northern Illinois U