Abstract
In the 1960s, when Czechoslovak authorities finally terminated the national hydropower program, this single- purpose industrial complex consisting of a hydrotechnical planning agency (Hydroprojekt) and various producers of machinery and equipment (especially ČKD Blansko) was faced with grim prospects. As one of the leading engineers of Hydropojekt put it: 'It's a crime to dissolve such a well-functioning industry...'. But he was quick to add that 'once it happens, we must look for new opportunities abroad!!' In the end, though, the atmosphere of a détente combined with a neoliberal turn in global politics helped Hydroprojekt survive and in the following two decades, it participated in dam development all around the world (mainly in developing countries).
We can thus see that after accumulating the requisite knowledge, Czechoslovak hydro-technicians started to export their dam-building expertise. In the mid-1950s, Hydroprojekt, which was in effect a local mutation of the original Soviet Gidroproekt Institute, started to orient part of its capacities towards export: first within the
Soviet Bloc, later to the developing world. This 're-export' of Czechoslovak dam-building expertise took highly varied forms, so that Hydroprojekt participated in United Nations Development Programme projects of global development assistance (Yugoslavia, Cambodia), in socialist foreign aid schemes (Laos, Cuba) but also - and perhaps most importantly - in global trade with dam-building expertise. Early success stories from late 1960s include the Mangla Dam in Pakistan, which was part of a hydropower plant completed in the mid-1970s, and the
Udavali Dam in Sri Lanka. In the 1970s, Hydroprojekt gradually expanded its activities especially to Latin
America (Cuba, Argentina, Mexico).
Based on local, but also Soviet and German sources, the proposed paper will look at the transnational formation and export of Czechoslovak dam-building expertise between the 1930s and 1990s. We will situate it withing the context of global 'concrete revolution', which - contrary to Sneddon's argument - was neither fully determined by the Cold War context nor fully dominated by the two power centres in Washington and Moscow.
By focusing on activities of the Hydroprojekt company on the international stage, we want to address the role of
Czechoslovakia (as an example of a 'minor' power) in social, economic, and cultural integration of the world.
Following Mark and Rupprecht, we argue that encounters between the 'socialist world' and the 'developing world' during the global Cold War were relatively plentiful, not always directly controlled by the USSR, and their effects had a significant impact on shaping global interconnectedness and global exchanges.