Great Depression

===Soviet Union===
The Soviet Union was the world's only [[socialist state]] with very little international trade. Its economy was not tied to the rest of the world and was mostly unaffected by the Great Depression.<ref>Robert William Davies, Mark Harrison, and Stephen G. Wheatcroft, eds. ''The economic transformation of the Soviet Union, 1913–1945'' (Cambridge University Press, 1994)</ref>

At the time of the Depression, the Soviet economy was growing steadily, fuelled by intensive investment in heavy industry. The apparent economic success of the Soviet Union at a time when the capitalist world was in crisis led many Western intellectuals to view the Soviet system favorably. Jennifer Burns wrote:

{{blockquote|As the Great Depression ground on and unemployment soared, intellectuals began unfavorably comparing their faltering capitalist economy to Russian Communism. Karl Marx had predicted that capitalism would fall under the weight of its own contradictions, and now with the economic crisis gripping the West, his predictions seem to be coming true. By contrast Russia seemed an emblematic modern nation, making the staggering leap from a feudal past to an industrial future with ease.<ref>Jennifer Burns (2009).[https://books.google.com/books?id=z6e9X6JxHpMC&pg=PA34 ''Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210415123811/https://books.google.com/books?id=z6e9X6JxHpMC&pg=PA34 |date=April 15, 2021 }}, p. 34. Oxford University Press. {{ISBN|0-19-532487-0}}</ref>}}

The Great Depression caused mass immigration to the Soviet Union, mostly from Finland and Germany. Soviet Russia was at first happy to help these immigrants settle, because they believed they were victims of capitalism who had come to help the Soviet cause. However, when the Soviet Union entered the war in 1941, most of these Germans and Finns were arrested and sent to Siberia, while their Russian-born children were placed in orphanages. Their fate remains unknown.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.genealogia.fi/emi/art/article237e.htm|title=Illegal Emigration to the U.S.S.R. During the Great Depression|website=www.genealogia.fi|access-date=September 19, 2016|archive-date=February 24, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210224141430/https://www.genealogia.fi/emi/art/article237e.htm|url-status=dead}}</ref>