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Many thanks to Kristin Hoganson, Mark Leff, Diane Koenker, my graduate colleagues at the University of Illinois, and the anonymous CSSH readers for their critical comments on earlier drafts of this essay.
"Do it the Ford way because it is the best way," read a slogan posted for workers to see at a mid-1920s factory site in the Soviet Union.1In the country's early years, "Fordizm" and "Fordizatsia" (Fordization) became fashionable watchwords and near-synonyms for industrialization, mass production, and efficiency. While American officials and politicians worked to draw sharp contrasts between "one hundred percent Americanism" and Russian Bolshevism during the post-World War I Red Scare, in that same historical moment workers in Russia often saw no contradiction in the appropriation of "Amerikanizm" and "Fordizatsia" as positive elements in the creation of a new socialist world. Soviet commentators and workers used "Fordizm" interchangeably with phrases like "American tempo" and "American efficiency."2Children and entire villages were named "Fordson" after the Ford tractor sold in Russia. During the 1920s, dozens of books and brochures on Ford methods appeared in Russia, hundreds of conferences were held on Henry Ford and his system, and his books sold in large numbers.3According to Soviet officials, "the combination of Russian revolutionary sweep and American efficiency" would be a foundation of Soviet society. Americanism and Bolshevism were not oppositional; American techniques and skills like the assembly line and mass production that made up "the Ford way" could produce an "Americanized Bolshevism" that would enable the Soviet Union to surpass the industrial achievements of the United States.4
Historians have long assumed that the United States and the Soviet Union diverged along "alternative paths" in the years following the Russian Revolution.5In this essay, I will argue that their relationship during this period is more accurately characterized as one of connection, overlap, and mutual constitution. I use as my case in point the history of the movement of people and ideas between the Ford Motor Company (FMC) and Soviet Russia.6Workers traversed pathways between the United States and Russia in multiple directions, and American managers and Soviet officials strove to cultivate productive...