The Cultural Cringe in Political Economy: Backwardness, Dependency, and the Specter of the West in the Soviet Union and Latin America

Soviet and Latin American economists had much in common. Both looked at the world economy from the periphery, both focused on inequality, and both railed against global capitalism. The works of Latin Americans like Raúl Prebisch and Celso Furtado borrowed extensively from the Soviet tradition of analyzing “backwardness.” Likewise, their Soviet contemporaries incorporated Latin American studies of “dependency” in their thinking. Yet, both groups strenuously denied any connection between socialism and dependency theory. Why? This paper explores the exchanges, misconnections, and misunderstandings between two groups of intellectuals who fought against Western hegemony, but remained enamored of Western culture.