Abstract

"Fiat S.p A. Strategy for the Soviet Market: The 1980s and the Challenging Path from Techno-scientific Cooperation to Productive Integration"

Valentina Fava, Czech Academy of Sciences and Technische Universität, Berlin (valentina.fava@unive.it)

In the 1960s, the Italian group Fiat signed several technical scientific agreements with Soviet authorities: among them the 1965 well-known contract for the construction of the Volga Automobile Plant (VAZ) (Siegelbaum, 2008; Fava, 2018).
Despite its initial achievement, in the 1970s and 1980s, Fiat S.p A. had to fight to defend its position on the Soviet market in different segments of the Group’s activities, in particular in the automobile.
The paper focuses on the last two important Italian Soviet cooperation projects in the automobile industry, which after time-consuming negotiations (from 1975 to 1983) ended up as partial failures for the Italian group. The first project concerned the manufacturing of a new model for the VAZ plant in Tolyatti (1976-1980) and the second one regarded the manufacturing and product engineering of a new car for the Moskvitch\AZLK plant near Moscow (1975-1983). In both cases, Fiat management not only refused to be general contractor, but also proved hesitant in envisioning a closer form of cooperation with the Soviets, be it a compensation agreement or any other forms of production integration.
The paper explores the reasons of this reluctance, especially in light of the fact that, in the same years, Fiat Auto was ready to sign with Poland one of the most courageous and forward-looking contract between a Western firm and a socialist country in the automotive sector (1979). The goal of the work is, on the one side, to reconstruct, through Fiat archival documentation, Fiat strategic debate; on the other, it aims at providing a picture on how East-West business cooperation evolved during the 1980s, laying the ground for the post 1989 radical change in European productive geography in the automotive sector (Havas, 2000; Domanski, 2005, 2009, 2013).