La Fiat e la AutoVAZ di Togliatti. Alla ricerca del fordismo perduto

In 1966 Vittorio Valletta, Fiat president, and the representatives of the Soviet Government signed the agreement that led to the building of the VAZ -Volzhsky Avtomobilny Zavod, a gigantic automobile plant. The Fiat-Soviet plant fostered the entrance of the Soviet Union (USSR) in the «Automotive Century» and gave place to the first massive East-West transfer of technology and knowledge in the automobile sector of the century. The paper underscores the reasons of Fiat interest in the Soviet market, underlying how the deal had been coordinated with the Italian entrepreneurial elites and partially backed by the American Administration. Furthermore, the paper sheds light on the channels that Fiat used to enter in the Soviet market - focusing especially Fiat's agent, Piero Savoretti