Le banche italiane e il commercio con l'Unione Sovietica

The essay focuses on the commitment of Italian banks to increase export in the USSR. In the late 1950s, Khrushchev was re-opening Soviet trade with the Western countries. At the same time, Italian foreign policy was opening up to new cooperation in the Mediterranean area and towards the Eastern Bloc. Trade became the starting point for new economic and political relationships between Rome and Moscow. Soviets needed long-term loans with low rates to buy special industrial supplies. Italian bankers gave funding and, working as financial experts, provided useful support to the government's project and to exporters. [Publishers' text].