Business interestsversusgeopolitics: The case of the Siberian pipeline in the 1980s

In the years 1979-1984, the Soviet authorities and various coalitions of Western European companies, some of them subsidiaries of US corporations or benefiting from licences and patents, supported by state authorities, negotiated several agreements to provide credit and equipment for the building of a 3, 500-mile-long gas pipeline between Northern Central Siberia and Western Europe. There was a fierce controversy between the US and European states and firms whether to honour such contracts or not amid renewed geopolitical tensions between East and West. Business history was thus intimately mixed with geopolitics and corporate commercial and industrial tactics were challenged by diplomatic ethics. While the rules of capitalism can once more be discussed, the numerous lobbying circuits are reconstituted in this article as a way to determine the potential freedom of action of day-to-day business when confronted with high-level politics.