USSR after the Victory. Abandonment of the Bretton Woods and the beginning of the formation of a dollar-free economic zone

Abstract

The article discusses issues related to the participation of the USSR in the struggle for a more equitable structure of the global monetary and financial system. Victory in the Great Patriotic War allowed the USSR not only to speak on equal terms to the West in the field of geopolitics, but also to avoid the trap of falling into a subordinate position in another equally important sphere – monetary and financial. The introduction of a system with a single currency backed by gold – which is exactly what happened at Bretton Woods in 1944 was a real revolution for the whole world. After 1945, it is the dollar, not gold, that becomes the world money, or rather, the only world currency. The USSR refused to join the Bretton Woods system, since that did not correspond to its status as the victor in the most brutal war in history. And in response, trade and political steps were taken to create intercountry associations based on the principles of mutual benefit and the provision of benefits to the weakest members of those associations. In April 1952, the formation of the “non-dollar” segment of the world market began, including socialist and many developing countries. That was a real breakthrough, since it called into question the principle of monopoly functioning of the dollar system. Opportunities for the formation of a sovereign, dollar-independent multilateral currency system are there at the present time too, while reformatting of the existing international currency system has not yet occurred.