Removing a German Sugar Factory to the Soviet Borderlands: A Case Study of the Postwar Technological Transfer in Soviet Moldavia (1946–52)

After the capitulation of Nazi Germany in World War II, the Soviets removed thousands of factories from Germany to the Soviet Union. The Soviets not only had to displace the factories, but also had to assimilate them in the Soviet context. This article shows how the Soviet authorities struggled with the assimilation of the German equipment in the peripheral town of Rybnitsa, in the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. The Soviets sought to get the best German technologies and to relocate them to the Soviet Union. They acted as the winners in the war, and demanded a replacement for Soviet losses. But could the German factories serve as a replacement for the Soviet factories? How did the Soviets recreate German equipment in the Soviet sugar factories? Was it enough to encounter and relocate the foreign technology in order to assimilate it?