Loans and Legitimacy: The Evolution of Soviet-American Relations, 1919-1933

In 1919 the Soviet government directed Ludwig Martens to open a trade bureau in New York. Before his deportation two years later, Martens had established contact with nearly one thousand American firms and conducted trade in the face of a stiff Allied embargo. His work planted the seeds for growing commercial ties between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. throughout the 1920s.

Because the United States did not recognize the Soviet Union until 1933, historians have viewed the early Soviet–American re...