Bloc-Building and (Dis-)Continuity. Cross-border connections and transformations in industrial enterprises in East Central Europe and China, 1945-1960

• Applicant: Dr. Jan Zofka
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History ; Economic and Social History
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 551934226

The project aims to study continuities and discontinuities in industrial enterprises and their transnational connections during the phase of bloc-building in the early Cold War. The genesis of the socialist camp implied a massive reorientation of the Chinese and East Central European economies towards the Soviet Union. This project proposes to go beyond the macro-level of trade statistics and to look at what happened at the level of enterprises. It asks for the role that pre-existing cross-border connections, namely trade networks and infrastructures, technology exchange, and flows of management know-how, played in the transformation towards socialism. The subprojects will examine single enterprises from the machine-building and vehicle-construction industries in China, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Bulgaria and East Germany with the aim to bring the micro-level findings into a broader comparative picture. With this approach, the project will reveal a more complicated pattern of rupture and renewal than the hitherto dominant paradigm of 'bloc autarky' suggests. It will also show in how far actors beyond political leaderships, like engineers and managers, disposed of their own power resources in the form of technical knowledge and transnational networks. Thus, it contributes to differentiate narratives of Cold War systemic bipolarity and socialist autarky after World War II.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Czech Republic, Italy, Poland
• Partner Organisation: Czech Science Foundation; Narodowe Centrum Nauki (NCN)
• Cooperation Partners: Professor Tomasz Olejniczak, Ph.D.; Professor Ales Skrivan, Ph.D.; Professorin Dr. Valeria Zanier
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Frank Hadler