The "Penicillin Project" of the he United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration as a factor of aggravation of the Soviet American relations

Abstract

The analysis of the declassified documents of the Russian State Archive of Economics and the State Archive of the Russian Federation made it possible to establish that the project of the United Nations Relief and Reconstruction Administration was not a priority in the USSR for supplying equipment for penicillin factories to the two Soviet republics. Of greater interest was the acquisition in the United States of expensive high-performance plant equipped with the latest machinery, albeit for cash payment. This prioritization affected time-frame and implementation progress of the UNRRA penicillin project and facilitated manipulation on part of the United States. In aggregate with distrust of the USSR in quality of the supplied equipment and the hope for alternative sources of obtaining necessary scientific and technical information, this resulted in loss of interest to this project. The turned out situation affected correspondingly on the attitude of the Soviet Government to the UNRRA missions operating on the territory of the Soviet Republics and to the leadership of the organization itself and contributed to the further exacerbation the of Soviet-American relations.