Assisting an Automatic Dream: UNIDO’s Development Programmes and the Bulgarian Research Institute for Instrument Design during the Cold War

This paper explores the role played by the UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) in the technological transfer that benefited the Bulgarian electronics industry. Utilising UNIDO and Bulgarian sources, it demonstrates the key role this technical assistance played in the growth of the socialist state’s electronic industry. Despite the official priority of North–South relations in its agenda, UNIDO developed a special relationship with the Eastern Bloc. The paper shows the critical avenue of West–East technology and expertise transfer by focusing on one of the main technical assistance projects, which supported the Research Institute for Instrument Design (NIPKIP) in Sofia. The paper assesses the impact of UNIDO’s programmes on the whole process of building an electronics industry in Bulgaria and shows converging but distinctive strategies. UNIDO facilitated the socialist state’s re-entry into the European economic and expertise exchange space and helped raise it to be a provider of technical assistance too.