This year marks 76 years since the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, which laid the foundation for the post-war world monetary and financial system. The conference was attended by 730 delegates from 44 states, members of the anti-Hitler coalition. The conference was chaired by US Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau. The US delegation was headed by a high-ranking official of the Treasury Department Harry White, the British delegation was led by a prominent economist and official of the Treasury Department John M. Keynes, the USSR delegation was headed by Deputy Foreign Trade Minister M. S. Stepanov, the Chinese delegation - Chiang Kai-shek …
The US and UK delegations set the tone for the conference. G. White and J. Keynes had prepared in advance proposals on the post-war structure of the world monetary and financial system. On some issues, the positions of the American and the British coincided, but they also had fundamental differences. Keynes proposed the creation of an International Clearing House for settlements between countries and the introduction of a supranational monetary unit called the "bankor", and he recommended to abandon gold as world money altogether. White proposed using the American dollar as world money, which had been issued by the US Federal Reserve System since 1914. For this, America was ready to provide free exchange of dollars for the yellow metal on the basis of a fixed gold parity. To maintain the equilibrium of the balance of payments of individual countries and maintain the stability of exchange rates (against the US dollar), it was proposed to create an International Monetary Fund (IMF), which would issue stabilization loans to countries. And to restore the post-war economy, it was proposed to create the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), which would issue loans and credits for the implementation of investment projects.
The victory was won by the position of the United States, whose military, political and economic power played a decisive role in Bretton Woods. By this time, about 70% of the world's gold reserves (excluding the USSR) were concentrated in the basements of the US Treasury.
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The decision on the participation of the USSR in the Bretton Woods Conference was made by I. V. Stalin. The solution was not easy at all. Everyone understood that Washington planned to use the conference to internationally consolidate its financial and economic dominance in the post-war world. There was also no doubt that Great Britain at the conference would be forced to yield to the United States - it had already had to fight not to lose its colonial system and not turn into a second-rate country.
The UN has not yet been created, and Washington has already taken the initiative to call the Bretton Woods meeting a United Nations conference. Washington had no doubts about making the decisions America needed.
Stalin had good (one might say, trusting) relations with American President Franklin Roosevelt. When Stalin had personal meetings with Roosevelt, it was possible to agree on many things. However, there are no signs that Roosevelt was actively involved in the preparation of the Bretton Woods conference. It is believed that the US proposals were prepared by a high-ranking official of the US Treasury (Department of Finance) Harry White, who was appointed head of the American delegation. The personality of G. White has been studied and discussed by many economists and historians for several decades. There is a debate over whether he was a Soviet agent or not. White's biographer D. Reese mentions White's secret ties to the US Communist Party and even suspects White of spying for the USSR. The defector Oleg Gordievsky stated that White back in 1935-1936.was recruited by the NKVD of the USSR. Apparently, White sympathized with the Soviet Union. He dreamed that the post-war world would be based on stable allied relations between the USA and the USSR. Perhaps he even contributed to the adoption of some decisions in favor of the Soviet Union (in the Ministry of Finance, he was responsible for international financial cooperation). There is also evidence that White transferred secret documents to Moscow through the mediation of the Soviet residency in the United States. The fact that he violated American laws is a proven fact, but whether he was a Soviet agent at the same time remains questionable.even contributed to the adoption of some decisions in favor of the Soviet Union (in the Ministry of Finance, he was responsible for international financial cooperation). There is also evidence that White transferred secret documents to Moscow through the mediation of the Soviet residency in the United States. The fact that he violated American laws is a proven fact, but whether he was a Soviet agent at the same time remains questionable.even contributed to the adoption of some decisions in favor of the Soviet Union (in the Ministry of Finance, he was responsible for international financial cooperation). There is also evidence that White transferred secret documents to Moscow through the mediation of the Soviet residency in the United States. The fact that he violated American laws is a proven fact, but whether he was a Soviet agent at the same time remains questionable.
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To what extent did White's program presented at the Bretton Woods conference take into account the interests of the USSR? In the model of the postwar monetary and financial structure of the world, which White successfully pushed through at the conference, the role and place of the Soviet Union clearly did not correspond to its status as a great power. Moreover, being inside such a monetary and financial system, the USSR could very quickly lose this status. The system was American-centric, or more precisely, dollar-centric. The USSR could be in such a system not even as a junior partner of Washington, like Great Britain, but only as a second-rate country.
It is enough to look at the purely quantitative parameters of this system. Under pressure from the United States, the conference adopted the following layouts of quotas and votes for the International Monetary Fund. The total amount of IMF quotas was determined at $ 8.8 billion. Here is how these quotas were distributed within the Big Five ($ billion): USA - 2.75; England - 1.3; USSR - 1.2; China - 0.55 and France - 0.45. Each member state of the Fund automatically received 250 votes, plus an additional vote for every $ 100,000 of its own quota. As a result, the total number of votes was 99 thousand, where the US received 28.0; Great Britain - 13.4; USSR - 12.0; China - 5.8; France - 4.8%. The three countries of the "Big Five" - the United States and their junior partners - the UK and France - had a combined 46.2% of the vote. This was more than enough for Washington to make whatever decisions it needed at the IMF.
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I think that many researchers overestimate the role of G. White in the creation of the post-war monetary and financial system. First of all, because the last word in the US Treasury Department belonged not to Harry Huxter White, but to Secretary Harry Morgenthau, who, being minister since 1934, no worse than White, understood all the intricacies of world finance and controlled the work of the latter on preparation of American proposals. However, Morgenthau was not the last resort. Marriner Eccles is rarely remembered today. And this figure is very serious. Like Morgenthau, Eccles found himself on the highest echelons of power since 1934, namely, he became chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Morgenthau and Eccles worked in one bundle, only the first resigned from his post in 1945, and the second in 1948. Eccles came to Olympus of monetary power from business, was a first-tier billionaire. At the same time, he always remained a little public figure and maintained the closest relations with the Wall Street banks, which are the main shareholders of the Fed. That is, the main ideas of the post-war structure of the financial world came from the bankers and the Federal Reserve, in other words, from those representatives of the world financial oligarchy who were preparing a project called “World War II”. Now they wanted to reap the benefits of this project. As for G. White, he only put on paper and announced the bankers' plans for the post-war world order. By the way, President F. Roosevelt was not very much allowed to this kitchen. At the same time, he always remained a little public figure and maintained the closest relations with the Wall Street banks, which are the main shareholders of the Fed. That is, the main ideas of the post-war structure of the financial world came from the bankers and the Federal Reserve, in other words, from those representatives of the world financial oligarchy who were preparing a project called “World War II”. Now they wanted to reap the benefits of this project. As for G. White, he only put on paper and announced the bankers' plans for the post-war world order. By the way, President F. Roosevelt was not very much allowed to this kitchen. At the same time, he always remained a little public figure and maintained the closest relations with the Wall Street banks, which are the main shareholders of the Fed. That is, the main ideas of the post-war structure of the financial world came from the bankers and the Federal Reserve, in other words, from those representatives of the world financial oligarchy who were preparing a project called “World War II”. Now they wanted to reap the benefits of this project. As for G. White, he only put on paper and announced the bankers' plans for the post-war world order. By the way, President F. Roosevelt was not very much allowed to this kitchen.who were preparing a project called "World War II". Now they wanted to reap the benefits of this project. As for G. White, he only put on paper and announced the bankers' plans for the post-war world order. By the way, President F. Roosevelt was not very much allowed to this kitchen.who were preparing a project called "World War II". Now they wanted to reap the benefits of this project. As for G. White, he only put on paper and announced the bankers' plans for the post-war world order. By the way, President F. Roosevelt was not very much allowed to this kitchen.
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I think that Stalin knew the results of the work of the future conference long before the start of its work. And not even because the program of the American delegation and the draft decisions of the conference were handed over to Moscow. Back in 1943, both Keynes and White quite often and openly expressed their thoughts and proposals on the future structure of the world financial system. Washington made no big secret about its imperial aspirations and plans to turn the dollar into the world's currency.
Nevertheless, Stalin made a decision on the participation of the USSR in the conference. First, Stalin expected America to finally open up a second front and act energetically on the battlefield. Of course, even without America, Hitlerite Germany will be defeated, but with the opening of a second front, the war may end earlier and the human losses of the Soviet Union will be less. Secondly, the American Lend-Lease program continued to operate, within the framework of which weapons, equipment, food, and other goods were supplied to the USSR. The terms of the program were periodically extended, Stalin counted on the continuation of supplies. Third, Stalin hoped for help from the United States after the end of the war. At the end of 1943, a meeting between Stalin and Roosevelt took place in Tehran, at which the latter promised that America would provide the Soviet Union with a loan in the amount of $ 6 billion.
Finally, Stalin strengthened his decision to participate in the conference in the spring of 1944. In April, Moscow received from Washington a secret report from Soviet intelligence agent Donald McLean (one of the "Cambridge Five"), where he worked as the first secretary at the British Embassy. The encrypted message said that Washington was ready to increase the loan to $ 10 billion. The People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Molotov immediately informed the US State Department through Soviet Ambassador Andrei Gromyko in Washington that the Soviet side was ready to participate in the conference.
At the conference itself, the Soviet delegation listened more, watched the Anglo-American fights from the sidelines. Head of the delegation, Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Trade M. S. Stepanov was a little-known person, especially against the background of such figures as John Keynes, Harry White or Chiang Kai-shek. In the discussions, the Soviet delegation touched upon only specific issues. The Soviet delegation signed the communique of the conference, agreed with all the decisions and politely left the quiet town of Bretton Woods.
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The decisions made at the conference had to be ratified by the participating countries before the end of 1945. Stalin did not have time to thoroughly consider the steps taken by the USSR after Bretton Woods. All forces were directed towards the victorious end of the war. And life ordered in such a way that Stalin did not have to deal with the problem of ratification of documents related to the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development for a particularly long time. In April 1945, President F. Roosevelt passed away, and G. Truman took his place. The period of allied relations between the USSR and the United States ended abruptly enough. In a short time, these relations developed into a confrontation initiated by Truman.
In the summer of 1945, Truman announced the termination of the Lend-Lease program for the Soviet Union. The following year, Washington began to demand from the USSR completely unjustified payments to pay off Soviet debt under Lend-Lease. The $ 6 billion loan that Roosevelt promised Stalin in Tehran in 1943 was out of the question.
Under the new conditions, it became clear to Stalin that membership in the IMF and the IBRD could cause irreparable damage to the Soviet Union. And in December 1945, Moscow refused to ratify the documents of the Bretton Woods Conference.
By the end of 1945, the agreement on the creation of the IMF had been ratified by 29 states, and in March 1946, at the founding session of the Board of Governors of the International Monetary Fund, additional regulations were adopted to regulate the activities of the IMF. On March 1, 1947, the Foundation began its operations. The IBRD began operating in 1946.
Subsequent world events, as well as the policies of the IMF and the IBRD, confirmed the correctness of Stalin's decision, who refused to join these international financial institutions.
