Outward and Inward Foreign Direct Investments: History of Major Russian Losses Since the Beginning of the 20th Century

The article schematically traces the history of Russia/USSR participation in the cross-border movement of foreign direct investment (FDI) from the end of the 19th century to 2022. It is shown that FDI inflows abruptly ended during the period of nationalization after the October Revolution of 1917. Although during the NEP there was a slight revival in concessions, a real recovery in FDI inflows began in 1989. So far, Russia has attracted few FDI for its size, and the events of 2022 will set it back again, making it difficult to accelerate technological modernization. FDI outflows from the country almost never stopped, although they were ideologically limited during the Soviet period. Small losses of Russian FDI due to external shocks have occurred periodically since the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, but the most serious reductions in outward FDI are due to political moves initiated by Russia itself: the October Revolution in 1917, the transfer of assets to friendly countries in the first half of the 1950s, the “squandering” of Soviet property in the early 1990s, and the consequences of the reunification of Crimea in 2014.