ABSTRACT

Introduction This chapter examines the relationships between Russia and outward foreign direct investment (OFDI), and consequently strategies of Russian multinational companies (MNCs) in a historical perspective. From an economic standpoint, Dunning’s Investment Development Path (IDP) model1 (Dunning 1981; Dunning & Narula 1998) fits with a long-term analysis of both OFDI and inward foreign direct investment (IFDI) and MNCs’ evolving strategies, despite the evolution being disrupted over six decades by restrictive rules of a communist regime. Zubkovskaya and Michailova (2014) have used Dunning’s Organization, Location and Internalization (OLI) paradigm, though not his IDP model, to trace Russian MNCs’ development from the 1990s on, with a shorter historical perspective than here. Before 1914, Russia primarily hosted inward FDI, a flow which was definitely phased out in 1932. Together with OFDI by some Soviet state-owned enterprises in the post-World War II period, the long century from 1881-1987 roughly fits with the first stage of IDP model in Russia/the Soviet Union.