Le aspettative italiane e il commercio con l’Est europeo tra malumori americani e profferte sovietiche (1957-1960)

Abstract

The essay analizes the concept of total, partial or no adhesion to the political-economic system created by US after the end of the second world war; a system based on a sharp division between the western capitalist world and the Soviet planned economy, whose fundamental assumption was the absence of any dialogue between the two parties. The absence of dialogue also concerned their commercial and financial relations, and was aimed at avoiding any acquisition of know how and equipment by Moscow, necessary to its industrial development. If at the end of the fourties the sharp division between East and West advocated by the United States was widely shared by European allies, in the mid-fifties it would become, if not anachronistic, difficult to achieve, especially in the field of trade relations. As loudly stated by Adenauer in 1958, at the climax of Berlin’s Crisis, the Western European states continued to trade with Moscow (forgetting to say that RFT was doing exactly the same). This created the conditions for a hard and lasting dispute between Western European states and US. The main reason of this conflict was the desire of West Europeans to enter into trade relationships with Eastern European states and to improve them significantly. Italy, case study of this paper, was part of this trend, especially through its Istituto per il Commercio Estero (ICE).