The first wave of the Soviet oil offensive: The Anglo-American Alliance and the flow of 'Red Oil' to Finland during the 1950s

Niklas Jensen-Eriksen

Business History, 2007, vol. 49, issue 3, 348-366

Abstract: During the 1950s, many observers regarded the expansion of Soviet oil exports as a serious threat to Western political and economic interests. Finland was the first non-communist European country that started to buy Soviet oil on a large scale. This made the country vulnerable to Soviet political pressure. An examination of the Finnish case indicates that Anglo-American governments adopted a much more complex attitude towards the emergence of the Soviet Union as an exporter of oil than the Cold War rhetoric would suggest. The US and British governments were not automatically willing to support their oil companies or to try to block Soviet oil exports. Instead of seeing Soviet oil exports to Finland simply as a threat to Western interests, the Foreign Office and the State Department considered the precise implications that Finnish purchases of Soviet oil would have on Western strategic interests on a case-by-case basis. Many other government departments were more interested in promoting their own departmental interests.

Keywords: Soviet Oil Exports; Cold War; Oil Industry; Business-Government Relations; Finland (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00076790701295011 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:bushst:v:49:y:2007:i:3:p:348-366

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/FBSH20

DOI: 10.1080/00076790701295011

Access Statistics for this article

Business History is currently edited by Professor John Wilson and Professor Steven Toms

More articles in Business History from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().