Export of the Czechoslovak Uranium Ore to the Soviet Union in 1946-1959

Vývoz československého uranu do Sovětského svazu v letech 1946-1959

Drahomír Jančík

Acta Oeconomica Pragensia, 2007, vol. 2007, issue 7, 194-208

Abstract: The study is devoted to the genesis of the Czechoslovak uranium ore industry and its boom in the 1950s. Attention is given to history of the Jáchymov mines and activities of the permanent Czechoslovak-Soviet commission consisting of four members and being charged to safeguard the Soviet influence. It gives an account of participation of the Czechoslovak and Soviet sides in financing the operation of the Jáchymov mines and in costing the uranium ore and its extracts being exported to the Soviet Union as a monopolistic consumer on the basis of the international agreement from November 1945. Until the end of the 1940s the world price of the uranium ore was basically higher than price of the ore exported by Czechoslovakia to Soviet Union. Afterwards the relation underwent a change and the Soviet Union began to pay for Czechoslovak uranium ore more than the world market prices. The reason for this attitude was that in comparison with the United States of America the stock of the uranium ore within the confines of its sphere of influence was relatively scarce. But the fact was that the Soviet Union tried to minimize gradually the extent of its engagements (i.e. financing of geological research, granting investment loan). The export of production of its uranium ore industry to the Soviet Union was particularly advantageous to the economics of Czechoslovakia - it represented by the end of the 1950s 32,6% of the value bulk of export to the Soviet Union, which was compensated by the import of important commodities - iron, oil, meat and especially cereals. It appears that the slackness of the Soviet interest in the output of the uranium ore just at the end of the 1950s contributed to deepen the difficulties of the Czechoslovak economics and dislocated its central plan. The plan calculated with a growth of income of the uranium ore industry which was built up impetuously. Its working costs grew steadily due to gradually more complicated geological conditions and poor content of the ore. The working costs were to become step by step a burden to the Czechoslovak economics.

Keywords: economic history; Czechoslovak industry from 1945; uranium ore industry (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
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DOI: 10.18267/j.aop.195

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