The Soviet State as Imperial Scavenger: “Catch Up and Surpass” in the Transnational Socialist Bloc, 1950–1960

THE BIGGEST PRIZE SOUGHT by the Soviet Union in its newly acquired postwar territory was the bomb itself-or initially the defense-related industries, research specialists, and scientists in the German zone deemed useful to achieving this goal. The Soviet technical and managerial elite routinely engaged in a similar search for useful forms of industrial development and technology throughout an alliance that eventually included even distant China. Moscow was at the center of a vast project of imperial scavenging that simultaneously shaped and was shaped by the transnational nature of exchange and collaboration in the socialist bloc. These exchanges within the socialist world shaped the evolution of the bloc in the 1950s, the Sino-Soviet relationship, and even the broader Cold War. 3 The socialist bloc was explicitly an alternative to the nation-state, and featured forms of exchange and communication designed to promote the interests of its diverse members and contributors. Scholars of Central and Eastern Europe routinely emphasize the importance of borderlands, frontiers, migration, and other aspects of the transnational history of this region, but less attention has been devoted to the community that explicitly and perpetually proclaimed itself to be dedicated to "in-Research for this article was made possible by grants from the