Download 1 CHAPTER FOUR: THE LINEAR MODEL AS SCIENCE AND

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CHAPTER FOUR:
THE LINEAR MODEL AS SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY
Introduction:
Marxism and the Linear Model
In this chapter of the dissertation, there follows a brief
history of technological innovation in the USSR.
This historical
narrative of innovation is presented because it is the best way
to display the inherent weaknesses of the Soviet system with
respect to technological innovation:
generalized discussions of
the problem tend to blur the distinctions periods;
and a single
snapshot in time fails to capture the dynamics of the system.
Therefore, an historical narrative offers the best hope of
explaining the reason why the Soviets failed to transform the
economy from the extensive to the intensive path of growth.
There are two main points to be made in course of the
following narrative:
one, that both the Party leadership and the
Scientific-Technical Intelligentsia (STI) have approached
technological and social development from the standpoint of faith
in the linear model;
two, that without spontaneous, self-
regulating feedback mechanisms (a free press and a free market)
technological progress in the Soviet Union worked better under
Party control and guidance (as with Stalin and Brezhnev) than
when scientists and engineers were left alone to follow their own
inspiration, directly contrary to theories which suggest that the
technocrats can run the system better than the partocrats;
it
will also be stressed that, as the Soviet Union's economy became
more and more complex in the seventies and eighties, the Party's
efficiency in handling feedback--its ability to provide
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bureaucratic push--became less and less efficient.
Efforts to
push along technological innovation became extraordinarily
difficult, even for relatively minor innovations.
The evidence presented in this chapter is offered as an
explanation of why the USSR failed to keep technological pace
with the West despite its enormous effort to do so.
This
chapter is also provided as further evidence that the linear
model is a poor heuristic device, and that the concept of
feedback more correctly describes the complicated relationship
between society, technology and science.
In the course of the following historical narrative, the
differences between "mechanistic" and "organic" administrative
styles will also be emphasized.
Studies of innovation and
administrative systems show that the most responsive and the
least responsive systems with respect to technological innovation
have been classified as the "organic" and the "mechanistic"
systems, respectively.
Of the two types of administrative
systems, the "organic" type of structure is more responsive to
the various types of feedback required for innovation.
The
mechanistic types of systems, on the other hand, are noted for
the departmental and administrative barriers to feedback.
In the mechanistic type of organizational structure, the
response to change is usually to rearrange existing
For a more complete outline of these two basic organizational
systems, see Tom Burns and G.M. Stalker, The Management of
Innovation (London: The Alcuin Press, 1961), 8.
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organizational structure, creating new groups or departments, or
expanding an existing division which would then become
responsible for the new circumstances.
Mechanistic organizations
tend to have rigid hierarchical relationships among their units,
together with strict lines of authority corresponding to the
various levels of the hierarchy.
Communication patterns between
tiers of the mechanistic hierarchy are formal and run from top to
bottom, unless otherwise solicited.
And those who work in the
hierarchical system tend to be functionally isolated from other
organizations, even groups with which they have close dealings.
Members of mechanistic organizations tend to "protect their
rears" as members of a vast bureaucratic army.
The history of
the Soviet Governmental structure is nothing if not a series of
such departmental reshufflings, a virtual "treadmill of reform."
On the other hand, organic systems tend to blur and traverse
interdepartmental distinctions and procedures.
They also tend to
have more open lines of communication than mechanistic systems,
running vertically among all sections as well as horizontally.
Persons in the organic system may lose much personal autonomy by
virtue of the fact that the purpose of the group takes precedence
over any one person's formal authority.
"Not only is the life he
leads and its emotional and intellectual content more contingent
on his participation in the working organization;
he is drawn
more frequently and more closely into personal relationships with
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the other members of the organization.
He is no longer 'left to
get on with the job himself.'"
In the course of the following narrative, it will be argued
that the Soviet government resembles the mechanistic type of
administrative system, while the Party apparatus resembles the
organic type of system.
Although hierarchical relationships are
fairly descriptive of the Party apparatus, the above quoted
definition of the personal relationships in the organic system is
much more typical of the Party than of the government.
This
"organic" system is a fairly accurate portrait of the Party
apparatus, where qualities of loyalty, group solidarity, and
partiinost' characterize the members of the nomenklatura.
Party
members are more likely to be promoted for sacrificing their own
interests for the sake of the group than are ministerial
administrators, who are judged more closely by the fulfillment of
plan.
Hence, "bureaucratic push" is much more likely to come
from the Party than the government.
Marxism, Leninism, and the Linear Model of Social Development
It is generally well known that the "Marxian paradigm" is
commensurate with "technological determinism," i.e., the belief
that technical change causes social change, and that technical
change is independent of social forces.
Marx referred to
Ibid, 234.
See for example, Alvin H. Hansen, "The Technological
Interpretation of History," Quarterly Journal of Economics 36
(November 1921): 72-83; Robert L. Heilbroner, "Do Machines Make
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technology as a "prime mover" and as the most important
"independent variable" in history;
indeed, as Langdon Winner
pointed out, Marx thought that he had isolated in technology "the
primary independent variable in history."
Soviet textbooks on Marxism-Leninism define the fundamental
elements of society as (1) the productive forces (i.e., the
tools, machinery, technology used), (2) the production relations
of people which, together with the productive forces, form the
economic base of society, and (3) the ideological superstructure.
According to Marxist dogma, when the productive forces of
society are changed through "the precision of natural science,"
then "the entire immense [ideological] superstructure is more or
less rapidly transformed" as a consequence.
When technological
innovation transforms the productive forces of society, the
production relations and the ideological superstructure are both
transformed as a necessary outcome.
Therefore, by transforming
the "material basis" of society through technological innovation,
History?" Technology and Culture 8 (July 1967):
335-45.
Langdon Winner, Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-Control
as a Theme in Political Thought (Cambridge: The MIT Press,
1977), 79.
Loren R. Graham, The Soviet Academy of Sciences and the Communist
Party, 1927-1932 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967),
34.
Fredreich Engels, Selected Works (Moscow: Nauka, 1962), 363.
Engels adds that "new, higher relations of production never
appear before the material conditions of their existence have
matured in the womb of the old society itself."
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in which the needs and wants of everyone are satisfied, communist
consciousness will result as a matter of course.
It is thus clear that the transformation of the material
basis of society through technological progress has always been a
central part of Marxist-Leninist ideology.
adopted Marx's base paradigm as his own.
Lenin, of course,
Building the productive
forces of society--the material basis of communism--was to be
guided first and foremost by science.
He said:
"Communist
society, as we know, cannot be built unless we restore industry
and agriculture, and that, not in the old ways.
They must be re-
established on a modern basis, in accordance with the last word
in science."
Thus, in the early years of the USSR, the planning of
science was perceived to be commensurate with social planning.
Since science ostensibly produced new technology in its wake,
which transformed society by building the material "basis" of
communism, the early Bolsheviks viewed science and its alleged
offspring, technology, as the twin pillars of the new society.
This is why the electrification of Russia was his first and most
important goal for building communism, for after this was
achieved, it would be possible, Lenin believed, to renovate "all
branches of industry and agriculture" as a matter of course.
"Only when you have achieved that aim," he stated, "will you be
able to build for yourselves the communist society which the
Quoted from Winner, Autonomous Technology, 267.
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older generation will not be able to build."
The belief that the so-called material basis of society
determines the cultural level of society is the reason why "the
members of the elite have assumed that technological progress is
equivalent to social progress, at least in the socialist system,
and have ranked it among the highest priorities."
This is why
Lenin's formula for the building of socialism was communist party
rule plus the electrification of the country:
if the material
basis of communism were built, all else--including the evolution
of universal communist consciousness (allowing the withering away
of the state and the eradication of the distinction between
mental and manual labor)--would fall into place.
Technological
advance has always occupied a central place in the public
pronouncements of the political elite.
One might say that
technological advance has been the primary goal of the Party
since the founding of the Soviet Union.
It is no exaggeration
that the USSR "is a nation with an explicit commitment to
science, including a value system and a philosophical world view
based on science, which is unmatched in intensity by any other
nation in the world."
The Soviet leadership has consistently approached this
Ibid.
Bruce Parrott, Politics and Technology in the Soviet Union
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1983), 3.
Stephen Fortescue, The Communist Party and Soviet Science
(London: Macmillan, 1986), 32.
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primary goal with an unshakable faith in the linear model.
And
they believed that the superiority of socialism over capitalism
hinged precisely on the ability of socialism to be more
technologically dynamic than capitalism.
Marxist-Leninist theory
stated that socialist society was capable of a higher level of
technological development than capitalist society due to its
superior ability to plan technological progress.
Ostensibly,
central planning had advantages over the market economy with
respect to the "externalities" (i.e., the social benefits) of
technological progress (i.e., more efficient products and/or
processes).
Since there were in theory no private gains of
individuals from technological advance in socialist society, all
gains in production efficiency through technology ostensibly
accrued to society.
But while this idea sounded good in theory,
it worked poorly in practice:
"a number of empirical studies of
innovations have indicated that the social returns to invention
and innovation often do exceed the private returns (see Scherer,
1980;
Mansfield, et al., 1977)."
In market economies, the
"externalities" of technological progress accrue both to
individuals and to society.
Indeed, as the above chapter has
demonstrated, without the possibility personal gain, there is
little incentive for individuals or corporations to innovate.
In 1918, therefore, Lenin planned the creation of an
Philip Hanson and Keith Pavitt, The Comparative Economics of
Research Development and Innovation in East and West: A Survey
(New York: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1987), 5.
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independent body for coordinating scientific research in the
USSR--to be managed by the scientists themselves.
a special commissariat for science and technology.
He also wanted
So he
entrusted N.P. Gorbanov with the task of writing a statute for
this new institution.
The commissariat did not materialize, due
to resistance from the Ministry of Education (Narkompros), the
Supreme Council of the National Economy (VSNKh), and the Academy
of Sciences, all of which had their special interests to protect.
A debate ensued, from which VSNKh emerged the winner:
the newly
created Scientific-Technical Section (NTO) was to be under the
administrative umbrella of VSNKh, limited to matters of
innovation and technology in industry, which had responsibility
for the central direction of research in industry.
While it
centralized the direction of research in industry, it is
nevertheless important to note that the NTO operated with
considerable autonomy from Party direction:
virtually all of the
institutes created during these years were based upon projects
initiated by the STI themselves.
Moreover, at this time, Lenin threw almost all of his
Robert Lewis, Science and Industrialization in the USSR (New
York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc., 1979), 37.
The NTO established policies regarding the types of technology
used in various branches of industry, supervised the process of
innovation as well as standardization of parts and production
methods.
Kendall E. Bailes, Technology and Society under Lenin and Stalin:
Origins of the Soviet Technical Intelligentsia, 1917-1941
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 54.
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political support behind the STI in their disputes with workers,
abridging in practice Marxist dogma on the dictatorship of the
proletariat.
And many of the workers' groups that favored
genuine worker control of industry openly attacked Lenin for his
policies.
For example, Alexander Shliapnikov, a metallurgical
worker and trade union official, openly attacked the Party and
accused Lenin of "pandering to specialists";
a nice twist to his
invective was his insistence that the party adopt a new slogan,
"everything for the specialists."
But Lenin responded by
outlawing "specialist baiting," and by ramming through
legislation protecting the rights of industrial scientists.
Bailes notes that physical attacks on specialists were no longer
treated as cases of criminal assault, but were labelled as
"terrorist acts."
essential to us:
Lenin declared:
"Scholars are absolutely
we must fight the Party cells to the hilt."
The point to be made from the above is simply that the STI
themselves directed the centralization and planning of Soviet
technology and science.
The STI believed, as did Lenin and
Bukharin, that "the future belongs to the managing-engineers and
engineering-managers."
As Bailes pointed out, the Soviet
Ibid, 59.
Ibid, 62. See also Kendall E. Bailes, "Alexei Gastev and the
Soviet Controversy over Taylorism, 1918-24," Soviet Studies 29
(July 1977): 373-394. Lenin's faith in the linear model helps
to explain why he supported "scientific management of labor,"
which subordinated the worker both to the STI and to the tyranny
of the stopwatch.
Bailes, Technology and Society under Lenin and Stalin, 108.
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government shared the technical intelligentsia's interest in
bringing science and the economy closer together, and in creating
institutes that would encourage collective research, that is,
research that often crossed older disciplinary lines and was
problem-oriented and 'practical.'"
Indeed, as Bailes also points
out, central control of planning and coordinating applied R & D
had been a dream of many specialists for years, "a value which
the Communist Party emphatically shared with leading elements of
the technical intelligentsia."
As Alexander Vucinich put it,
government authorities and academicians were in basic agreement
in two respects:
"both accepted and espoused the Baconian
utilitarian view of science, and both viewed advance in
[scientific] theory as the most reliable index of progress.
They
also agreed that the entire spectrum of scientific endeavor could
contribute to the progress of the national economy."
The Party program of March 1919 mentioned the need to
further develop the country's technological resources in order to
create the most fruitful conditions for applied scientific work,
while simultaneously noting that the STI, "in the majority of
cases, are inevitably impregnated with bourgeois attitudes and
Ibid, 56.
Ibid.
Alexander Vucinich, Empire of Knowledge: The Academy of Sciences
of the USSR (1917-1970) (Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1984), 134.
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habits."
Nevertheless, Lenin instructed Dzerzhinskii (head of
the Cheka) to publish an order which stated that repressive
measures should only be taken against the bourgeois specialists
when it had been unequivocally established that they were working
to overthrow the government.
Himself a "Mechanist" (who believed
that natural scientists were by practice, if not by ideology,
dialectical materialists), Lenin ordered that NTO become an
"independent" organization, which he believed would accomplish
more than the trust controlled laboratories working on routine
applied problems.
Unlike Bailes, who argued that this attitude
marked a degree of tolerance in Lenin, I would argue that
"tolerance" never became one of Lenin's virtues.
On the
contrary, this attitude demonstrates Lenin's faith in the linear
model.
Managed by scientists and engineers, NTO tended to be
occupied more with theoretical than with applied science.
Strains between the expectations of the STI and the expectations
of industrialists began to appear very early.
For example, in
1923 Pyatakov (head of VSNKh SSSR) tried to dissolve NTO and
place each research organization directly under the direction of
the industrial trust for which it worked.
Ipatieff and his
supporters in the Presidium of VSNKh won the debate over NTO, but
Quoted from Lewis, Science and Industrialization, 6.
Ibid.
Ibid, 57.
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the matter re-opened a year later in 1924.
Unhappy with the pace
at which the NTO worked, Pyatakov thought that a decentralized
system more directly responsive to the needs of industry would
improve the performance of the research institutes.
Pyatakov
appointed a special commission under the Chief Economic
Administration of VSNKh to study the effectiveness of NTO,
because opponents of the institution thought that there were too
many administrative barriers between research and industry and
that it was an "overloaded" bureaucratic organization.
The
commission ruled in NTO's favor, stating in its findings that
applied science would produce favorable results "only where
backed by widely based exploratory research."
The commission
also defended the work of NTO as of ultimate (though not
immediate) value to the whole economy.
Nevertheless, in
recognition of the problem of the divorce between the direction
of research done at the institutes and the needs of industry, the
commission recommended that ties between the NTO and industry
should be strengthened by creating a "Technical Conference"
composed of scientists and those in industry.
At this point, it is necessary to digress from the
historical narrative and discuss the origins of the debate
between VSNKh and NTO, which was to become a continuous theme in
Soviet history.
These disputes between the STI and the
industrialists can be understood in terms of the failure to
Ibid, 42.
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recognize the profound differences between science and
technology.
Whereas the STI in charge of the NTO believed that
supporting basic research was the best strategy with respect to
technological progress (in alignment with the linear model),
VSNKh stressed technological R&D in the service of the national
economy.
In alignment with the linear model, both the scientists
and the Party functionaries agreed that science was essential for
technological progress;
but they diverged over the practical
efficacy of basic over applied research, which Vucinich described
as a "deep cleavage."
"While the leading scientists resolutely
adhered to the idea that science is a prime mover of
technological development, the ideologues argued that the needs
of technology should be the prime mover of scientific research."
It was easy for influential Academicians to convince the
government officials (who lacked scientific or technical
expertise) that "the most abstruse branches of modern science
were potentially the most promising."
While it is easy to sympathize with anyone who resists Party
control in the USSR, it must not be overlooked that such
statements by the STI fit the category of "snow jobs" aimed at
increasing professional autonomy, a central value of basic
researchers.
As Kornhauser pointed out, "Professional science
favors contributions to knowledge rather than to profits;
Vucinich, Empire of Knowledge, 135.
Ibid, 136.
high
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quality research rather than low-cost research;
programs rather than short-term results;
long range
and so on.
Industrial
organizations favor research services to operations and
commercial development of research.
conflict of values and goals;
These differences breed
they also engender conflicting
responsibilities and struggles for power."
(Emphasis mine.)
In
addition, the conflict in values and goals includes disagreements
over who should set goals and over how research policy should be
determined.
This principle of the subordination of the research worker
to an outside purpose is typical of American and other firms
which successfully innovate.
The trauma of re-socialization from
the norms of science to the norms of technology can be very
painful for the researcher.
Kornhauser cites one example where a
cleavage developed within a corporation in which the "research
people" were pitted against the "development people."
Kornhauser
reports that the scientific-minded viewed the laboratory as an
William Kornhauser, Scientists in Industry (Berkeley:
of California Press, 1963), 25.
University
See also Michael Polanyi, The Logic of Liberty: Reflections and
Rejoinders (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951;
reprint, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Midway Reprint,
1980), 44 (page references are to reprint edition). Polanyi
argues that technologists have no right to "academic freedom" by
virtue of that they are devoted to practical ends, not the
expansion of knowledge. He argues, moreover, that if the
research worker is to serve any external purpose such as earning
profits or waging war, "he must submit his contribution to the
judgment of those who are ultimately responsible for waging war,
running the telephone system, building roads, or making profits
for a commercial enterprise."
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opportunity for fundamental research, whereas the development
people wanted the laboratory to continue product engineering.
In
this case, the shortage of highly trained specialists forced the
company to favor the research faction.
When management is in a
more favorable bargaining position, however, it will, "as a
rule," take responsibility for development of new products or
processes out of the hands of the "research people."
"In fact,"
he adds, "the top executives of the corporation have made the
major decisions regarding the coordination of development
activities, thereby sharply curtailing the jurisdiction of
research managers."
Returning to the historical narrative, the "Technical
Conference" failed to create organic links between science and
industry:
in 1925, only a year after the ruling of the special
commission, Pyatakov again forcefully brought up the problem of
the divorce between research and the needs of industry, and
called for a solid organizational link between research and
industry.
But the problem with strengthening this link between
the direction of research and industry was the fact that
Dzerzhinskii supported NTO, which no doubt influenced the
findings of the above commission.
Meanwhile, Ipatieff defended
NTO by taking refuge in the classic linear model:
speaking of
the necessity of "pure" research as the harbinger of technology,
Kornhauser, Scientists in Industry, 29.
Lewis, Science and Industrialization, 43.
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he stated that institutes "cannot have in mind the interests of a
particular enterprise, but must consider general goals, general
objectives, objectives which are of a scientific rather than a
purely practical nature."
If the scientific manpower were
dispersed throughout the country to work in individual industrial
trusts, he argued, "there would be no state control over the
correct organization and administration of the institutes."
Moreover, there would be duplication of research efforts, a waste
of resources.
Note that Ipatieff, head of NTO and a scientist who had
refused to join the Communist Party for ideological reasons
several times, defended the linear model with the support of the
Old Bolsheviks, including Lenin, Bukharin, Trotsky and even
Dzerzhinskii.
Despite NTO's failure to spur technological
progress, the Party leadership defended NTO based upon their
faith in the linear model.
For example, Trotsky said in 1925
that individual scientists conducting their own research without
worrying about social utility were really producing that utility.
If the Bolsheviks and the STI diverged greatly over political
and other matters, they both agreed that technology was the
offspring of science, and that the "correct" way to transform the
material basis of society was to facilitate scientific research.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Graham, The Soviet Academy of Sciences, 44.
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Yet this policy failed.
In 1926, when the glavki were first formed directly under
the Presidium of VSNKh, many industrial managers wanted to
decentralize NTO and place institutes directly under the
responsibility of enterprises.
Yet Lenin, Bukharin and
Dzerzhinskii supported the autonomy of NTO, arguing that it was
necessary "to treat the scientific and technical establishments
very carefully, bearing in mind their significance and
importance."
Nevertheless, Ipatieff was sacked as head of NTO in
1927 due to his poor record of with respect to R & D, and was
replaced by V.M. Sverdlov, an industrial administrator.
The new
head of NTO emphasized the necessity of serving production, a
demeaning step for pure researchers.
He transformed NTO into the
Scientific and Technical Administration (NTU) and insisted that
it "had to become support for economic organizations in the
maximum application of scientific achievements to the practical
activity of production."
Despite all of these failures to plan spur technological
innovation, Bukharin wrote in 1927 that "planned scientific work
is the new principle which is quite fundamentally linked to
socialism's planned economy."
Graham pointed out that during
NEP, "the idea of the planning of science was even in this period
Lewis, Science and Industrialization, 45.
Ibid, 46.
Ibid, 79.
108
clearly accepted by most of the government administrators, as
well as by many economists and sociologists;
the scholarly
journals contained many articles discussing the ways in which
such planning could be accomplished.
In the relatively free
period before the first five-year plan, the writers on the
planning of science seemed to believe their designs would be
accepted voluntarily, at least by scientists with a political
commitment to the regime."
(Emphasis mine.)
Bukharin was probably the most ardent advocate of planning
Soviet science (and technology).
He outlined five phases of
science which he thought susceptible to planning.
The first
stage was that of determining the percentage of the nation's GNP
to be devoted to planning science.
The second phase concerned
assigning logistical support to scientific research institutes.
The third stage dealt with assigning the optimum geographical
location for the institute, much like one plans the location of a
factory.
The fourth object of planning concerned the education,
training and placement of personnel in the most rational manner
possible.
The fifth element of planning concerned the subjects
of research to be undertaken by the scientists.
Bukharin
Graham, The Soviet Academy of Sciences, 44.
The main issues in this complex area were: the number of workers
the nation wished to maintain; the distribution of these workers
among research institutes and design bureaus; the qualifications
of such workers to perform their work; and the correct use of
all workers of all qualifications. See Graham, The Soviet
Academy of Sciences, 58.
109
devoutly believed in the linear model, and thought that
theoretical research in science ultimately paid dividends in some
type of application.
He thought that the most important reason
for planning scientific research was its applicability to the
needs of the national economy.
A year later in 1928--despite the poor track record of the
newly organized NTU--the Party urgently stressed its belief that
the decisive issue with respect to economic development remained
"the improvement of technology," and called for new industrial
plants based on "the latest scientific achievements."
Passionately believing in the linear model, the Fifteenth Party
Congress in this same year suggested a larger role for
"scientific technology," and further demanded "the closest tie of
science, technology, and production" together with a "decisive
convergence" of research with economic planning.
Stalin and the "Great Break"
Troyanovskii, a planner from GOSPLAN, summed up what was to
become two different approaches to the planning of science in
November of 1929.
In an article in Nauchnyi Rabotnik, he said
that science (and its alleged offspring, technology) could be
planned either through the "statification" (ogosudarstvlenie) of
For a thorough discussion of Bukharin's model of socialist
planning of science, see Graham, The Soviet Academy of Sciences,
56-62.
Parrott, Politics and Technology, 21.
Ibid.
110
science, where planning was left to the Party and the state, or
through its "socialization" (obshchestvlenie), where planning
would be left to the scientists themselves.
Whereas Lenin,
Bukharin, Trotsky et al opted for the latter approach, Stalin and
his supporters opted for the former approach.
By the time of the first five-year plan, the STI had
achieved an amazing degree of ideological and professional
autonomy.
The STI were, in fact, a major obstacle to Stalin's
ambitious five-year plans.
Hence, most of the defendants in the
Shakhty and Industrial Party show trials were opponents of the
first five-year plans.
Moreover, their unified technocratic
outlook, based upon the linear model, "predisposed them to take
strong stands regarding issues of professional policy with social
implications, in opposition to the Stalinist leadership."
The
most important social policy over which they disagreed with
Stalin was the matter of education, which revealed the
frustration of the political leadership over the failure of the
STI to devote themselves to practical technological problems.
In 1928, Stalin put forward a resolution to turn over
control of all higher technical education to the Supreme Council
of the Economy (VSNKh), i.e., to the industrial ministries.
The
political moderates and the STI opposed this move, and remained
Lewis, Science and Industrialization, 81.
Bailes, Technology and Society under Lenin and Stalin, 97.
Ibid.
111
in favor of keeping education under the control of the
Commissariat of Education (Narkompros).
On the one side of the
debate, the STI and Narkompros emphasized the necessity of theory
and of sound general preparation.
They accused the existing
industrial colleges of turning out graduates who "lacked
independence and were often helpless to solve new tasks."
Lunacharsky, head of Narkompros, argued that "there is a certain
minimum of general scientific culture which an engineer must
master and which we cannot dispense with."
On the other side of
the debate, Stalin and his cronies attacked Narkompros for being
too theoretically oriented, for producing "artists and ballet
dancers."
They disliked the "bourgeois" intelligentsia who had
"a quick intellectual grasp of the bookish type."
As is well-known, Stalin won the debate over education,
Narkompros was emasculated, and control of educational issues
shifted to VSNKh.
Clearly, however, an underlying issue during
the "cultural revolution" of 1928-1932 was the need for applied
science (engineering), and not fundamental research.
By taking
technological and scientific education out of the hands of
Narkompros and placing it in the hands of VSNKh and industrial
Ibid, 184. Others echoed the same complaints:
"Some of our
vtuzy and vuzy have been graduating specialists whose
qualifications are on the level of technicians and not
engineers."
Ibid, 169.
Ibid, 170.
Ibid, 166.
112
managers, education was to have produced scientists and engineers
who were oriented toward technology, not science.
Along with
class quotas in education, Stalin instituted a policy of
promoting the praktiki (engineers who had no formal training, but
who nevertheless exhibited technological problem-solving skills).
The applied approach under Stalin produced graduate engineers
who considered it "a scandal to learn the achievements of world
technology," rather than creating their own.
Whereas industrial
managers told their designers to give them machines based on the
latest achievements of foreign technology, the new "red"
specialists thought it necessary not to copy foreign models, but
to introduce "something new," something "of his own."
Much has been written on the Mechanist-Deborinite debates of
the late twenties, focussing on the philosophical and ideological
aspects of the debates.
informative;
These works are extremely valuable and
but it is clear that these debates were more than
ideological and philosophical battles:
they were aimed at
reducing the professional autonomy of scientists and engineers,
at bringing the STI more directly into problems of production.
As Joravsky put it, "the clear tendency of official policy during
the [late] 'twenties was to undermine the ideological autonomy of
Parrott, Politics and Technology, 39-40.
Ibid.
See Graham, The Soviet Academy of Sciences, and David Joravsky,
Soviet Marxism and Natural Science (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1961).
113
natural scientists."
Bailes asks:
"Did not the engineers and
scientists represent a new stratum whose place in modern society
seemed guaranteed indefinitely by the imperatives of
industrialization?
If their knowledge gave them control over the
means of production, then what was to prevent the new
technological elites from seizing political power in
postcapitalist society?"
It seems clear that the main reason for the MechanistDeborinite debates was not the ideological autonomy of natural
scientists, who abjured Marxist dogma as a matter of principle.
Even the intolerant Lenin lived with this.
I would argue that
the most important reason behind the debates and the show trials
of the STI was the professional and political independence of
scientists and engineers, who had skillfully manipulated Lenin's
faith in the linear model to their own advantage.
If the linear
paradigm was not in error, as Marxist dogma assured, then the STI
were to have been the managers of the new society.
Apparently
Lenin believed that this would happen, for he reportedly said
that in the new Soviet state, "not only will politicians and
administrators hold forth, but also engineers and agronomists.
This is the beginning of a very happy era, when politicians will
grow ever fewer in number, when people will speak of politics
more rarely and at less length, and when engineers and
Joravsky, Soviet Marxism and Natural Science, 221-222.
Bailes, Technology and Society under Lenin and Stalin, 160.
114
agronomists will do most of the talking."
(Emphasis mine.)
Stalin, on the other hand, also attacked the professional
and political independence of the STI because of his faith in the
linear model.
Despite the Party's best efforts and assistance,
the STI had failed to build the material basis of communism.
Therefore, he reasoned that there must have been something wrong
with the STI.
The answer was found in the "bourgeois" attitudes
of the STI, many of whom had received their education under the
Tsars.
According to Markov, a Stalin crony, Bolsheviks like
Bukharin were ideological captives of the old specialists, who
had become "overweened" and needed to be "brought down to earth."
Both the cultural revolution and the first show trials resonate
with need to connect scientists and engineers with the needs of
industry, with the need to form an organic link between
technological research and actual needs of industry, with the
need to abridge the elitist attitude of the nation's top
scientists.
And as Burns and Stalker pointed out, the organic
connection makes more demands upon the professional autonomy of
scientists and technologists:
they are required to devote more
and more of their time and mental capacities to functional
activities which are "less and less their own sphere."
Quoted from Don K. Rowney, Transition to Technocracy: The
Structural Origins of the Soviet Administrative State (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1989), 1.
Bailes, Technology and Society under Lenin and Stalin, 109.
Burns and Stalker, The Management of Innovation, 234.
115
There is thus a strong connection between the unbridled
professional autonomy of scientists and engineers based upon the
linear paradigm and the failure of the USSR to become
technologically dynamic.
When technological innovation did not
materialize as promised, Stalin blamed the failure on the
"bourgeois," elitist attitudes of the STI.
justification in this charge:
And there is some
Joravsky rightfully points out
that the vast majority of scientists and engineers were as little
Bolshevik or Marxist at the end of the twenties as at the start;
and their dedication to building the material basis of communism
was as weak in the late twenties as at the beginning.
But this
was not a matter of political sabotage or even truculence:
it
was a matter of professional socialization and the difficulties
in making scientists become engineers.
It was a matter of poor
feedback mechanisms, of the lack of either "market pull" and
"bureaucratic push."
Under the guidance of the STI, technological progress was
dreadfully slow.
For example, in 1928, the People's Commissariat
of Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate (NKRKI) reported to the
Council of People's Commissars on the industrial research
network.
Their findings concluded that the links between
research and industry were too tenuous to be useful.
This was
also the first occasion in which the term vnedrenie (which
carries the meaning that forward motion encounters resistance in
Joravsky, Soviet Marxism and Natural Science, 222.
116
the surrounding medium, and implies the necessity to push against
obstacles) was used to describe the process of innovation.
NKRKI
reported that, of eleven major pieces of research completed by
the Karpov Chemical Institute, only three had been adopted by the
chemical industry.
And only one of the twenty-four institutes
under VSNKh, the Scientific Chemical Pharmaceutical Institute,
was reported to have "more or less satisfactory" links with the
industries it served.
"It seems, therefore, that the outcome of
a lot of the applied research undertaken took the form of papers
and reports rather than products and processes."
One would have
expected a better return on investment.
Under Stalin's terrorist leadership, however, the Soviet
government pushed scientists and technologists to concentrate on
topics of clear social utility.
While the Stalinist tactics were
clearly unjustified from the standpoint of human rights, they
were nevertheless necessary for overcoming bureaucratic inertia,
for overcoming the professional and institutional barriers to
innovation in the USSR.
Hence, the government-drafted charter of
the Academy of Sciences in 1930 (which the Academy had little
choice but to accept) put new weight on economically useful
research;
and soon after the new charter, the Academy received a
See Joseph Berliner, The Innovation Decision in Soviet Industry
(Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1976), 3.
Lewis, Science and Industrialization, 116.
Robert A. Lewis, "Research and Development Effort of the Soviet
Union, 1924-1935," Science Studies 2 (April 1972): 174.
117
major increase in contractual financing of Academy research by
economic organs, along with a noticeable shift in the disciplines
of newly elected members away from basic research toward
technological fields.
This fundamentally transformed the
original purpose of the Academy away from doing fundamental
research.
Within the Academy of Science, the number of
researchers grew from 1,018 in 1927 to 7,090 in 1937.
The
Academy's budget rose from 3 million rubles per year in 1928 to
28 million in 1934, and exploded to over 175 million rubles per
year in 1940.
And this expansion of the Academy was aimed
primarily at servicing projects of importance to the national
economy, a clear shift in emphasis from basic to technological
research, from internal direction of research to external
direction of research.
Nevertheless, the links between research institutes under
the direction of the industrial ministries and the industrial
enterprises they serviced remained weak.
Trying to create more
organic links between research and industry, Bukharin suggested
in 1932 that factories be attached informally to various branch
research institutes, strengthening the ties between research and
production.
The problem with the present system, he noted, was
the lack "of any firm structure of responsibility for the
Parrott, Politics and Technology, 50.
Ibid, 49.
Lewis, Science and Industrialization, 118.
118
industrial application of completed research."
As a result of
Bukharin's suggestions, the Party had worked out a detailed
administrative procedure for promoting technological innovation
by 1932.
The Party resolutions described these procedures in
some detail, and outlined the role of each partner in the process
of innovation very clearly, a clear departure away from the
professional autonomy of the STI.
First, after checking the results of their research at a
"pilot" plant, the research institutes had to send the technical
report to the relevant trust or factory.
Second, after having
been notified by the research institute, the plant or trust had
to inform both the Scientific Research Sector (NIS) and the glavk
of its having received a report.
Third, the factory or trust had
to notify the glavk and the NIS of the procedure they received,
and to either adopt it, or give detailed reasons for rejecting
it.
If the industrial organization chose to adopt the
innovation, the glavk concerned became responsible for helping to
establish the new processes and procedures.
If the industrial
organization chose not to adopt the proposed innovation, and it
was found that they gave insufficient reason for having done so,
the glavk could order its adoption and bear the responsibility
for its adoption.
Despite the detailed responsibility for innovation, "the
evidence suggests that no radical improvement in the rate of
Ibid.
119
vnedrenie resulted."
For example, of the thirty-seven projects
completed by the State Optical Institute at the specific request
of the optico-mechanical industry in 1933, only seven had been
adopted.
Similarly, the People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry
did a study of innovation in the plastics industry and found that
the projects completed by the Leningrad Plastics Institute found
little reception in industry;
and the projects which industry
adopted were slow in being implemented.
In several cases, Lewis
reports, it took the direct intervention of Ordzhonikidze himself
to ram through an innovation.
All of these handicaps notwithstanding, the Soviet leaders
still believed in the superiority of the socialist system over
the capitalist system with respect to technological innovation.
For example, in 1934, the Seventeenth Party Congress predicted
that by 1939, the USSR would be "the most technologically
advanced state in Europe."
And research and development were to
provide the key to this success.
Backing up this rhetoric with
muscle, the Soviet leadership increased capital investment in
research and development 300 percent during this period.
By
1935, one year into the second five year plan, the USSR already
spent twice the proportion of its GNP on R&D than the US.
Ibid, 120.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Parrott, Politics and Technology, 34.
During
120
the second five year plan, moreover, Ordzhonikidze (Commissar of
Heavy Industry) ordered the machine tool industry to increase its
types of machine tools from 40 to over 200.
He instructed the
industrial design bureaus to make their designs based upon the
best of American and European models.
Meanwhile, the Academy of
Sciences were forced to sign a "general contract" with the
People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry that covered a number of
research activities of importance to heavy industry, such as work
on new sources of energy.
By the mid-thirties, all but a small
part of industrial R&D was aimed at servicing national
commissariats that controlled industry.
In spite of the heavy investments in R&D, the USSR continued
to lag behind the West in innovation.
feedback.
The problem was inadequate
Unlike R&D in the West at that time, where research
was performed directly in laboratories attached to industry (thus
responsive to market forces), in the USSR there were few
"organic" connections between industry and R&D.
In an attempt to
organically link engineering with production as it was done in
the West, Ordzhonikidze issued a decree in July of 1935 ordering
the decentralization of industrial research, bringing the
research institutes that served industry directly under the
Ibid, 38.
Vucinich, Empire of Knowledge, 139.
Lewis, "Research and Development Effort in the Soviet Union,
1924-1935," 166.
121
supervision of enterprises which used their services.
Following
this logic further, the Party recommended to the Commissariat of
Heavy Industry in May of 1936 that some tasks normally done at
research institutes be transferred to the plants.
Predictably,
the directors of institutes were against decentralization, since
this diminished their professional autonomy.
Parrott suggests
that "they felt that the demands of enterprise managers would be
even less compatible with good applied research than those of
higher-level bureaucrats."
However, the main problem with this decentralization was
that it assumed that enterprise directors were actually
interested in innovation, as were their counterparts in the West
(who operated under market forces).
little incentive to do so:
In reality,
they still had
there was little or no feedback--no
market pull, and not enough bureaucratic push.
The twin
disjunction of "independent" research institutes (which were more
interested in theoretical than applied problems) and of
industrial enterprises (which had positive incentive not to
innovate because it raised production targets) made the
relationship between industry and the research institutes largely
a formality, in which innovation was "on paper only."
Parrott, Politics and Technology, 65.
Ibid, 66.
Ibid.
Lewis, Science and Industrialization, 120.
Therefore,
122
"Until the bureaucratic structure within which the factory
operated was basically altered to create a strong interest in
innovation at the enterprise level, R&D could not be
decentralized successfully."
Meanwhile, the Academy research institutes were further
forced to become centers of technological research.
In
attempting to overcome the administrative and functional distance
between the Academy and industry, the Academy set up a
Technological Council in 1934 to coordinate the application of
the Academy's basic research.
In 1935, the Party forced the
Academy to create the Division of Technological Sciences, devoted
to the needs of the economy.
Strong resistance to this emerged
from Academicians, who noted that such a division did projects
which were "simply not a matter of science but of engineering,
and for that there should be an engineering academy."
Only
political pressure form the Party overcame the resistance.
And
these changes were written into the new charter of the Academy in
1935.
Still, the connections between Academy research and
industrial application remained tenuous.
In 1938, the Academy
President ordered all institutes to submit monthly reports on
their success in making basic research applicable to industry.
At the same time that the Academy Presidium acknowledged its
Parrott, Politics and Technology, 68.
Ibid, 52.
123
"direct obligation" to make their research of practical use in
industry, both Stalin and the Council of People's Commissars
severely criticized the Academy for not connecting its activity
with socialist construction.
Moreover, Stalin did his own
"boundary work" between science and non-science, and stated that
Soviet science "does not allow its old and recognized leaders to
enclose themselves in the shell of priests of science, the shell
of monopolists of science."
In response to this Stalinist
boundary work, the Party set up four new institutes within the
Technological Division dealing with fuel production, power
engineering, and other applied fields of extreme importance to
the industrialization effort.
Despite Stalin's liberal use of bureaucratic push and the
enormous increase in funds committed to R&D, "the immediate
return on this investment was small in terms of successful native
technical innovations."
administration remained:
The hallmarks of mechanistic
the dichotomy between the internal
logic of R&D and the priorities of production remained;
and many
researchers "continued to pursue projects of fundamental interest
to themselves, though less suited to the needs of industry and,
Ibid, 54.
Bailes, Technology and Society under Lenin and Stalin, 340. See
also Mark R. Beissinger, Scientific Management, Socialist
Discipline, and Soviet Power (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1988), chapter 3. He described the essence of Stalinism
as "antibureaucracy," which accords with the thesis presented
herein.
124
therefore, less likely to find quick application there."
Hence,
"constant administrative pressure from above was necessary in
many cases before responsible managers at the production level
would give attention to innovation."
Stalin and Bureaucratic Push:
A Few Modest Successes
As mentioned in the introduction, bureaucratic push is
necessary in a system where there are no market incentives or
other feedback mechanisms between society, technology and
science.
Thus, Party control of scientists and technologists for
the purpose of innovation proved more successful than when the
STI were left alone.
For example, Stalin imported a great deal of foreign
technology, a form of bureaucratic push.
Anthony Sutton's study
of Soviet technology from 1917-1965 concluded, for example, that
"no fundamental industrial innovation of Soviet origin has been
identified in the Soviet Union between 1917-1965.
Soviet
innovation has consisted, in substance, in adapting those made
outside the USSR or using those made by Western firms
specifically for the Soviet Union and for Soviet industrial
conditions and factor patterns."
Likewise, Lewis reports that
the most successful of R&D organizations with respect to
successful innovation were the "project organizations," which
Bailes, Technology and Society under Lenin and Stalin, 345.
Ibid, 348.
Anthony C. Sutton, Western Technology and Soviet Economic
Development 1945-1965 (Washington: Hoover Institute, 1973), xxv.
125
were responsible for setting up imported technology, done on a
project basis for planning entire new plants, and for entirely
reconstructing old industries.
Lewis reports that, although only
a small part of their work was R&D, "they played a most important
role in technological innovation."
There were, of course, exceptions to the rule of disjunction
between research and industry.
Where technological research was
successfully brought within the walls of the factory, and where
the Party pushed the managers of such factories to innovate,
success was achieved.
This is the case with the machine-tool
industry, so vital to the development of equipment for other
industries.
It was targeted as essential for autarky, and
therefore it had both in-house R & D laboratories and much Party
involvement in securing supplies, overcoming bottlenecks, etc.
In the machine-tool industry, reliance on foreign technology
dramatically declined in the thirties.
Whereas in 1928-1932, 95
percent of the equipment produced by the machine-tool sector was
based on foreign design, this percentage dropped to 75 percent in
the period between 1933 and 1937, and declined even further to 40
percent between 1938 and 1940.
By 1939, Academician Chudakov
pointed to the machine-tool industry as an example of what could
Lewis, "Research and Development Effort of the Soviet Union,
1924-1935," 168.
Ibid.
Parrott, Politics and Technology, 46. These findings are the
result of careful American and Soviet studies.
126
be achieved if enterprises would have experimental shops within
their own walls.
The most important pre-war exception to the rule of
disjunction between R&D and industry was the aircraft industry.
In contrast to the centralization of R & D that existed in other
industries, aircraft design was undertaken by a whole series of
small flexible units, which competed with each other, and were
under the close control of the highest government and Party
organs.
Aircraft designers had strong incentives to innovate,
receiving prizes and other encomiums for successful work.
In
contrast to civilian industry, where managers usually made the
decision to adopt new technology (unless otherwise ordered),
aircraft R&D personnel working for the ministry of defense
themselves supervised the development of prototypes and even the
establishment of production lines.
Due to the pressure of
competition and the prestige associated with aircraft design-aided and abetted by Stalin's direct interest--aeronautical
engineers were willing to go to great lengths to get their
designs built, unlike the majority of R & D personnel in industry
who were content to see their designs on paper.
Another area where the Party bureaucratic push was effective
was in the area of military R&D.
Unlike civilian R&D, which
sought to limit the "duplication" of research, the Party
Lewis, Science and Industrialization, 126.
Ibid, 132-139.
127
leadership fostered competition among military design bureaus.
Unlike the civilian sector, which often lacked research
facilities and test equipment, the miliary was well supported.
But most important of all, Party push was far more prevalent in
military R&D than in the nonmilitary enterprises.
The Impact of World War Two
The most important technological successes came during World
War Two, which brought about drastic changes in the progress of
Soviet innovation.
In effect, the nation's "leading scientists"
laid down their mantle as theoretical researchers and became
"applied" scientists, or to put it more prosaically, common
engineers.
Like their colleagues in the United States and
England who had volunteered to do practical work, these academic
scientists "all had to accept a measure of subordination."
"Many
of our activities," reported Academician Ioffe in 1942, "take
place not in laboratories but in factories, where we help in
constructing prototypes or in developing new manufacturing
methods."
In deed if not in words, Academicians recanted their earlier
statements about basic research as the surest and quickest way to
technological innovation.
And though there was in general no
love lost between the Bolsheviks and the Academy of Sciences, the
latter organized the Commission for the Mobilization of the
Polanyi, The Logic of Liberty, 45.
Quoted from Vucinich, Empire of Knowledge, 199.
128
Resources of the Urals for National Defense in the summer of
1941.
Directed by "leading members" of the Academy, as Vucinich
reports, the commission sent out a total of 800 scientists (in
teams or brigades) to the military-industrial enterprises in the
Urals.
More organically linked with the needs of industry, the
new brigades were very successful.
The former administrative
unit of the Academy Research Institute served only as "frames of
reference and budgetary units," and not centers of basic
research.
As Vucinich noted, "the war pressure encouraged
practical inventions. . .
By bringing scholars closer to the
technical processes of production, the experience of World War II
helped the scientific community to acquire valuable skills in
producing complex instruments of scientific research."
After the war, the Academy of Sciences returned to the
pursuit of pure science.
Yet the success of the brigades of
Academy scientists in nuclear fission, rocketry and other areas
during the war made it difficult for Academicians to protect
themselves against "the ominous attacks by the apostles of
Stalinist practicalism."
And the impact of Zhdanovshchina on the
Academy was an ideological crackdown and "a patriotic campaign to
involve the Academy's staff in the practical application of
scientific knowledge."
Ibid, 200.
Ibid, 249.
Ibid, 239.
Therefore, up until Stalin's death, the
129
Academy followed the wartime pattern of sending out brigades of
scientists to work directly in assisting technological
innovation.
"The task of these brigades was to provide on-the-
spot scientific assistance to the designers and builders of
hydroelectric power stations, canals and irrigation systems, to
trace and elucidate problems whose scientific study is
indispensable for blueprinting and building these projects and to
maintain close contact with construction."
apparently proved to be very successful:
These projects
in 1952, Academician
Nesmeianov (president of the Academy)--under pressure to place
the Academy under the service of the "Great Stalinist Plan for
the Transformation of Nature"--recommended that brigades of
scholars become a permanent component of the organization of the
Academy.
Due to the unequivocal success of the new
"practicalist" approach--which put scientists and engineers to
work on technology, not basic science--the brigade system was
retained, and "took many forms and deeply affected every phase of
the Academy's activities."
Yet this "practicalist" approach met with disfavor among
many members who championed the Academy's tradition of basic
research, and thought that science should be left alone to "move
forward by its own impulse."
Ibid.
Ibid, 240.
Ibid, 241.
As Vucinich put it, "the growing
130
emphasis on direct participation in practical projects caused
grave concern among leading men of science who favored basic
research as the most vital function of the Academy."
Moreover,
Vucinich adds that the campaign for practical science undercut
the "traditional right of the scientific community to serve as a
key judge of the social utility of scientific theory."
Others
were hard pressed to relate their work to the immediate needs of
the national economy.
Still others did not mind the emphasis on
applied science (engineering), due to the wartime devastation.
And many continued to echo the Marxist-Leninist view of science
as the "mainspring of social well-being," while loudly protesting
the pressure to take part in the "brigades of scholars" whose
field engineering projects removed them from basic research.
Khrushchev and the Sovnarkhozy
After Stalin's death, the emphasis on technological over
basic research continued.
Between 1951 and 1955, the
Technological Division of the Academy added more new members than
any other division of the Academy.
And between 1951 and 1956, it
added more new institutes and technical specialists than any
other division.
By the time of the sensational Twentieth Party
Congress of 1956, which marked the ascendancy of Khrushchev, the
Ibid.
Ibid, 242.
Ibid.
Parrott, Politics and Technology, 163.
131
Technological Division of the Academy outstripped the fundamental
research divisions both in terms of personnel and material
resources.
Nevertheless, despite the continual emphasis on basic over
applied research, the death of Stalin marked a new chapter in
boundary work between science and technology within the Academy
of Sciences.
Leading members of the Academy emerged to challenge
the Stalinist idea that the primary job of the Academy was to
service the technological needs of the national economy.
In
1956, President Nesmeianov argued that the departments of the
Academy should be organized according to the internal logic of
their particular disciplines (for the sake of basic research),
suggesting that this was preferable to the institutes "organized
on multidisciplinary lines, such as the Technological Division's
Oil Institute."
Nesmeianov stressed that the interdisciplinary
connections between institutes (the result of bureaucratic push
under Stalin), though positive with respect to the creation of
technology, proved a hindrance to basic research.
course, a true observation.)
(This is, of
Nesmeianov complained that the
Technological Division's activities "had often crossed the
boundary that should separate research of far-reaching
significance [i.e., fundamental research] from ministerial topics
of limited significance [i.e., applied research, that is,
Ibid.
132
engineering]."
On the other side of the coin, members of the Technological
Division demanded more support from the Academy Presidium for
technological research, based upon their success in solving
strategic technological problems (from the standpoint of the
national economy).
academy:
There emerged a deep division within the
"while the engineers and the government looked at
technical institutes as the very heart of the Academy, the
leading scientists looked at them as a misplaced burden hindering
the Academy's efforts to widen the horizons of scientific
thought."
In short, the technologists and the scientists came to a
mutually advantageous resolution to the problem, which correctly
acknowledged that there are "two distinct and separate systems of
research," and which dissolved the organic connections between
the Academy and industry which had been formed during the war.
There would be two separate systems of research:
one devoted to
basic science and the other concerned with the immediate
technical needs of industry."
Parrott argues that this
arrangement did not prove to be a major loss to the technological
dynamism of the USSR, since the Technological Division had,
Ibid.
Vucinich, Empire of Knowledge, 299.
Ibid, 300.
133
according to Parrott, "enjoyed only modest success."
Although the new administrative system correctly recognized
the profound differences between science and technology, it is
clear that this mechanistic readjustment of the system failed to
be as technologically dynamic as its more organic organization
under Stalin.
In the first place, there were weak feedback
mechanisms between those who did science and those who did
technology.
Vucinich points out that the Academy created
"scientific councils" for the solution of interdisciplinary
problems;
but these councils were not concerned with technology,
but with "crossing the boundaries of individual disciplines in
search of theoretical elaborations dictated by the internal logic
of evolving science."
These councils were not, therefore,
similar to the highly successful "brigades" that were formed
under Stalin's tenure.
Apparently, the main job of these
councils was to give young productive scholars a stronger voice
in the Academic of Sciences, where older scholars who had "passed
the zenith of their scholarly productivity" dominated the
Parrott, Politics and Technology, 164. See also Graham, "The
Place of the Academy of Sciences in the Overall Organization of
Soviet Science," in Soviet Science and Technology: Domestic and
Foreign Perspectives, ed. John R. Thomas and Ursula KruseVaucienne (Washington, DC: The National Science Foundation,
1977), 44-51. The separation of R&D from basic research was
strongly supported by the Academy leadership, who wanted to do
research "whose usefulness is outside the time framework usually
employed in economic
planning."
Vucinich, Empire of Knowledge, 311.
134
direction of basic research.
Moreover, the leading scientists at the Academy--ever
enamored of the linear model (whether out of conviction or as a
ploy to gain greater professional autonomy)--continued to state
the leitmotif that "the deeper the theoretical abstractions, the
more sweeping the range of applied knowledge."
Yet, as noted in
the previous chapter, the internal logic of the development of
science (which guides the scientist's research) has little to do
with the internal logic of the development of technology (which
is based upon the economic and technological infrastructure).
Meanwhile, Khrushchev's reorganization of the industrial
ministries in 1957 exacerbated the problem of bureaucratic
divisions between R&D and industrial enterprises.
Before
Khrushchev's reorganization, the majority of applied research
institutes were under the administrative umbrella of the various
glavki.
In 1957, however, the Party had transferred most of the
R&D organizations to the Regional Councils.
Formerly
concentrating on limited areas of technology under the glavki,
these institutes under the Regional Councils were intended to
serve a variety of different industries.
As one would expect,
Soviet analysts noted the decline in the quality of R&D work done
ibid, 312.
Ibid, 311.
Berliner, The Innovation Decision in Soviet Industry, 112.
135
during the sovnarkhozy.
The problem was that the sovnarkhozy did not have the
authority to force technical research institutes to help
enterprises with innovation, even when their help was essential.
Moreover, Parrott points out that even though the local Party
officials were eager to bring the industrial R&D institutes more
directly under their control, "this did not mean that they were
actively committed to innovation."
Under the sovnarkhozy, the
organic connections between technological research and industry
grew fewer in number.
For instance, of the 800-plus targets for
new technology in the 1959 plan of the Ukrainian sovnarkhozy,
only 50 percent were met.
"Not only did the economic councils
fail to fulfill many of these targets, they also tried to avoid
embarrassment by having the lagging projects removed from their
plans in the course of the planned year."
As a result of the
Khrushchev policies, therefore, technological progress slowed
considerably.
"In most sectors the hallmarks of organic
administration. . . were still missing."
technology was badly underfulfilled:
The need for new
new equipment was
Ibid, 113. Berliner notes that much of the evidence on the slow
increase in the productivity of new technology, or the even lower
productivity of new Soviet technology, comes from the period of
the sovnarkhozy.
Parrott, Politics and Technology, 176.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid, 177.
136
frequently described as inadequate or even less economical than
the machinery it replaced;
the machine-building sectors remained
underfunded and understaffed;
and the lack of communication of
new ideas between scientists and technologists continued.
To make matters worse, Soviet analysts incorrectly diagnosed
the problem with the system as due to the duplication and overlap
of R&D work in the different regions.
problem was equally incorrect:
And the solution to the
the Soviet leadership, in an era
of de-Stalinization, resurrected the system of planning
technological innovation like the NTO under Lenin.
This marked
the recentralization of R&D under state guidance in alignment
with the linear model.
It will be recalled that the
137
decentralization of R&D institutes under the direction of the
various glavki in the mid-thirties had been relatively successful
because the glavki themselves exerted bureaucratic push on
enterprises to innovate as part of their overall pressure to
raise productivity.
This system produced numerous incremental
improvements, which accounted for over 80 percent of Soviet
technological innovation.1
This system had remained in place
until the sovnarkhozy reforms.
Amann Cooper and Davies found
that under this system, "the number of varieties of the new
technology developed and put into production has tended to be
surprisingly high."2
But with the creation of the State Committee of the Council
of Ministers for the Coordination of Scientific Research
(hereinafter referred to simply as the State Committee) in 1961
as the modern successor of the NTO, mechanistic and bureaucratic
divisions increased.
According to Professor Vucinich, the State
Committee was a single organization entrusted with planning and
directing both applied and basic research on a national scale.3
Based upon faith in the linear model, the functions of the State
Committee were:
"to determine the future lines of scientific and
technological concentration;
to coordinate the work of
scientific institutions related to the key technological
1See Ronald Amann, Julian Cooper and R.W. Davies, eds., The
Technological Level of Soviet Industry (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1977), 62.
2Ibid, 63.
3Vucinich, Empire of Knowledge, 304.
138
processes;
to supervise the preparation of plans for current
research and development;
to plan the future territorial
expansion of research centers;
to exercise general supervision
over research activities on all levels of the institutional
hierarchy;
science;
to determine the main lines of capital investment in
to devise methods for raising the level of scientific
productivity;
to plan the establishment of intersectoral
research centers," and so on.4
Obviously, the idea of planning
both scientific and technological progress was absurd;
but it
became state policy.
By the end of Khrushchev's tenure as First Secretary, the
organic connections between R&D institutes and industry were so
bad that even the State Committee failed to overcome regional
barriers.
Without the ability to exert bureaucratic push at the
enterprise level, the State Committee had trouble forcing
innovation based upon ideas developed in the research institutes-even within the same ministry.
For example, institutes
subordinated to the State Committee for Automation and Machine
Building developed a new computer for automated industrial
processes.
But as Parrott points out, the State Committee was
unable to have several small batches of these computers produced
at a plant controlled by the Severodonetsk sovnarkhoz, because
sovnarkhoz officials ignored the State Committee's order and
refused to include this task in the plant's production plan.5
4Ibid, 303.
5Parrott, Politics and Technology, 175.
139
Despite all of these failures, Khrushchev still believed
that the Soviet system could outstrip the West economically, the
basis of which would be technological progress.6
The dissolution
of Stalin's organic links between research and industry forced
Khrushchev to look for technological fixes abroad.
And he was
more willing to borrow technology from the West than Stalin had
been--of necessity.
Khrushchev believed that autarky was harmful
in the economy and especially pernicious in the development of
technology.
And he thought that the better the study and
introduction of the newest achievements of world science and
technology were organized in the USSR, "the more successfully
scientific-technological progress will proceed."7
His
willingness to grant political concessions to West Germany in
return for technology was listed as one of the reasons for his
fall from power.
The Brezhnev Era and the STR
The Brezhnev leadership's approach to technological progress
can be called a "modified linear model," which is characterized
by the linear model plus a return to the Stalinist practice of
controlling scientists.
The main feature of the modified linear
model is the centralization of planning of both scientific and
technological development, which Khrushchev started.
author put it this way:
One Soviet
"The headlong development of the
revolution in science and technology, accompanied by growth in
6Ibid, 137.
7Ibid, 149.
140
the number of scientific institutions, as well as of personnel
working in science, and by an increase in the volume of financial
investments in science, requires a strengthening of the
integrative functions of the management of science and
reinforcement of elements of centralization and coordination for
the purposes of increasing the economic efficiency of this sphere
of social activity."8
In 1965, the Brezhnev leadership further
embellished Khrushchev's top down approach to technological
progress by creating the State Committee for Science and
Technology (SCST, the successor to Khrushchev's State Committee),
which was to oversee both the planning of basic research in the
Academy system and the planning of technological research in the
ministries.9
While correctly separating science from technology
with respect to planning, the SCST nevertheless had the
impossible task of planning both science and technology from the
top down.
Here is how the system worked.
8G.A. Dorokhova, "Improving the System of Agencies Administering
Science," Soviet Law and Government 12 (Summer 1973): 7. See also
I.L. Davitnidze, "The Management of Scientific Research in
Industry," Soviet Law and Government 11 (Fall 1972):
123-124.
Planning of research stems from the plans of the national economy to
experimental and design work to introduction of technology in
production. It is stated that "further scientific progress depends
largely on the efficiency of management in this area. The rising
social significance of science makes the problem of management an
increasingly pressing one." This also requires "an intensification
of the ties between basic and applied research."
9For a general overview of the process of planning technological
and scientific progress, see John Turkevich, "Soviet Science Policy
Formulation," in Soviet Science and Technology:
Domestic and
Foreign Perspectives, ed. John R. Thomas and Ursula Kruse-Vaucienne
(Washington, DC: The National Science Foundation, 1977), 15-43.
141
The planning of innovation began with the State Planning
Committee (GOSPLAN), which assigns certain targets to the
ministries, based upon high-level decisions made by the SCST.
"The function of the committee is to implement a single state
policy in the field of scientific and technological progress and
to assure the fullest possible use of the achievements of science
and technology in production."10
Beginning planning of
technology with the planning of fundamental research, the SCST
implements the recommendations of the Academy of Sciences, which
"identifies fundamentally new possibilities for technological
progress and prepares recommendations for their use in the
economy."11
The purpose of the plan is to "give maximum
consideration to the possibilities created by scientific and
technical progress by also provide for the creation of the best
conditions for its realization."12
Ostensibly, this system is a
10A.E. Lunev, "Law and the Administration of Scientific
Institutions in the USSR," Soviet Law and Government 13 (Fall 1974):
26.
11Ibid, 28.
Working with the Academy of Sciences, the SCST
"provides scientific guidance at the federal governmental level for
the most important research in the natural, technological, and
social sciences." It is noted that the Academy thus enjoys "high
authority endowed with real rights as the coordinating body for
general theory." See also Eugene Zaleski, "Planning and Financing
of Research and Development," in Soviet Science and Technology:
Domestic and Foreign Perspectives, ed. John R. Thomas and Ursula
Kruse-Vaucienne (Washington, D.C.: The National Science Foundation,
1977), 277-279. The alleged advantage of centralized planning of
scientific and technological progress is that it permits planning of
large-scale projects.
12Abel Aganbegian, "The Path to Perfecting the Technology of
Planning," Soviet Law and Government 23 (Winter 1982-1983): 13.
142
"belt drive" from fundamental research to applied research to
production.
An executive arm of GOSPLAN, the SCST evaluates new
technological proposals and makes recommendations based upon
their feasibility.
After having received instructions from the
State Planning Committee, the various ministries in their turn
distribute these assignments to specific enterprises in the
control figures issued to them.13
These assignments are
evaluated in many cases by an ad hoc Enterprise Innovation
Commission, which is chaired by the director of an enterprise or
the chief engineer, and which determines the feasibility of the
assignments.
The recommendations of the Enterprise Innovation
Commission return to the State Planning Committee for further
refinement, and so on.
When the list of planned innovations is
finally established, then it is integrated into the overall
enterprise plan;
and once the decision to proceed with an
innovation is made final by incorporation in the plan, "then the
State Planning Committee bears a clear responsibility for
exerting pressure [through the SCST] on the organization charged
with the implementation, such as ministries and enterprises."14
13See Joseph Berliner, The Innovation Decision in Soviet
Industry, pp. 43-58, for an excellent description of this process.
14Ibid, p. 49. For a more complete explanation of the role of
the SCST in economic planning and its work with GOSPLAN, see
Gertrude E. Schroeder, "Recent Developments in Soviet Planning and
Incentives," in The Soviet Economy: A Book of Readings, 4th ed.,
ed. Morris Bornstein and Daniel R. Fusfeld (Homewood, IL: Richard
D. Irwin, Inc., 1974), 500-505.
See also Loren R. Graham, "The
Place of the Academy of Sciences in the Overall Organization of
Soviet Science." He discusses the SCST's removal of the Academy's
technological research institutes and their placement within the
143
Created in 1965, the SCST is responsible to "ensure the
cohesion of state policy in the field of scientific and technical
progress."15
It has at its disposal a reserve fund, and it has
access to the State Committee for Material Supplies for the
distribution of special supplies for important projects.16
The
SCST approves research plans, allocates money, and checks on the
results of engineering research conducted by the USSR Academy of
Sciences, the local academies of science in the Soviet republics,
and research institutes in industry, medicine, and agriculture.
It has always been headed by Party members who are closely
associated with the defense industry.17
Before the creation of
the SCST, the glavki were required by the Council of Ministers to
reduce production costs in its enterprises by a certain
percentage, which was often translated by the minister's
technical staff into orders to introduce small-scale innovations
capable of greater efficiency.18
But the SCST was empowered to
aid in the replacement of old production processes with entirely
new technologies, concentrating on radical, large-scale
ministries.
15John Turkevich, "Soviet Science Policy Formulation," in John
R. Thomas and Ursula Kruse-Vaucienne, eds., Soviet Science and
Technology: Domestic and Foreign Perspectives (Washington, D.C.:
The National Science Foundation, 1977), p. 24.
16Ibid, 25.
17Kendall E. Bailes, "Science and Technology in the Soviet
Union: Historical Background and Contemporary Problems," in The
Gorbachev Era, ed. Alexander Dallin and Condoleezza Rice (Stanford:
Stanford Alumni Association, 1986), 68.
18Berliner, The Innovation Decision in Soviet Industry, 51.
144
innovation.
In alignment with the linear model, the SCST has several
institutes devoted to the flow of information from basic to
applied science, and on applied research in other fields.
These
institutes are the "All-Union Institute of Scientific and
Technical Information," the "Institute of Problems of Control,"
and "All-Union Information Center."
The institutes directly
under the SCST are all of a general, primarily informational
character, and do not include laboratory research.19
As mentioned above, the most important thing to notice about
the SCST is that it is the modern successor to the failed NTO
under Lenin in the twenties.20
Like the NTO of the twenties, it
is staffed and run mainly by scientists and technologists.
But
unlike the NTO of the twenties, which had been run by politically
suspect personnel like Ipatieff and other Mechanists who had
little use for Bolshevik dogma, the SCST is run mainly by
scientists and technologists who are Party members who are
responsive to Party goals.
It has always been headed by Party
members with strong connections to the Ministry of Defense.
Moreover, with the announcement that science had become a
direct productive force in the USSR in 1966, the Party believed
in its ability to plan science and technology (in accordance with
the linear model) because of the new "scientific" discipline of
19Graham, "The Place of the Academy of Sciences in the Overall
Organization of Soviet Science," 46.
20See Vucinich, Empire of Knowledge, 304.
145
naukovedenie (literally, "science management").21
Under S.R.
Mikulinski's direction, the Institute for the History of Natural
Science and Technology (attached to the Academy of Sciences) was
to develop naukovedenie to be used by the SCST as both the
theoretical and practical basis for planning science and
technology in the USSR.22
This new branch of science is called "prognostication,"
which, by means of special mathematical and analytical tools and
the most powerful computer technology--by drawing in as experts
very different and very erudite scientists--"forecasts the
results of the application of knowledge acquired today."
V.
Rapoport (head of the laboratory of the All-Union Scientific
Research Institute of Systems Research [VNIISI]) adds that the
ever-wider application of prognostication "is the very first
basis" of the objective estimation of the urgency of selected
themes and objects of investigation, for the substantiated
planning of science and its effective control."23
Rapoport views the advancement of science as commensurate
with the acquisition of scientific knowledge, hence the reliance
on computers to systematize and store it.
that information is paradoxical;
The reason for this is
"if it is recorded somehow, is
a practically everlasting product, but at the same time is
21See Linda Lubrano, Soviet Sociology of Science (Columbus:
American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, 1976).
22Ibid, 14.
23Joint Publications Research Service, Science as a Subject of
Control, by V.Rapoport. June 1979. JPRS, 74246/142-155.
146
surprisingly perishable."24
New knowledge, especially when
implemented in production, "reduces the value of previous
knowledge."25
To somehow preserve obtained knowledge for use
without allowing it to be lost in time and space, more and more
specialists are engaged, "not in research, but in simply
recording, systematizing, storing and retrieving already
available information."26 (Emphasis mine.)
The result is an
increased "labor-intensiveness" of science and scientific work,
making it a mass profession.
Needless to say, this approach does
not mark the transition of science from the "intensive" to the
"extensive" path of growth.27
24Ibid, 144.
25Ibid, 152.
26Joint Publications Research Service, Planning Long-Range
Scientific-Technical Development, by G. Ialovoy. June 1979. JPRS,
74235/72-78. (Ialovoy is a candidate of economic sciences.) He
states that at the present, "science and technology are among the
largest consumers of the national economy's resources. There is
specific evidence of this in the fact that absolute expenditures for
scientific
research,
engineering
development,
experimental
production of new products, and pilot application of progressive
manufacturing processes (not including expenditures from the fund
for new technology, from the production development fund and from
certain other sources) amounted to 17.7 billion rubles in 1976 (or
4.6 percent of the national income produced), while expenditures to
apply measures that come under the head of new technology amounted
to almost 8 billion rubles. In that year the labor force in the
sector of science and scientific services numbered 1.25 million
persons (or approximately 3.6 percent of all workers and employees
in the industrial sector)."
27"Prognostication" is a relatively new discipline. See for
example Joint Publications Research Service, Future Prospects for
the Creation of an Automated Research Control System, by I.A.
Budzko, M.S. Levin and B.I. Turovskiy.
5 June 1979.
JPRS,
73614/37-45. Budzko is a VASKhNIL Academician, Levin a doctor of
technical sciences, and Turovskiy a candidate of technical sciences.
147
Based upon the belief in the validity of the new sciences of
naukovedenie and prognostication, the Soviets believed that they
could duplicate the millions of incremental technological
adjustments through planning.
Correctly noting that
technological progress is a systems-wide phenomenon, the Brezhnev
leadership attempted to manage the development of science and
technology through their own "systems approach," which is the
conscious management of the interaction of various "subsystems,"
that is, education, research, technology, production and
As they put it, "Scientific research is one of the most complex
forms of human activity. Naturally, directing scientific activity
is a not less complicated process. A special science of scientific
research management is only beginning to be developed." Here are
the basic problems of directing scientific research, which the new
"science" will handle: (1) "predicting the most efficient direction
for the development of science; (2) planning scientific research
and (3) controlling the carrying out of plans for scientific
research."
Moreover, the future planning of scientific research
will be done through the application of computer analyses: "Within
the State Control System for collection and processing of
accounting, planning, and management data on the state economy
(OGAS), the State System for Scientific and Technical Information
(GSNTI) is being formed.
The USSR Gosplan is developing an
Automated Control System for plan accounting (ASPR), and a State
Control System for agricultural administration (ASU-sel'khoz) is
also being formed."
There will be a single unified center for
dissemination and release of scientific and technical information.
As one can see, those who control these centralized computers can
control the flow of information and hence, the scientific
establishments themselves.
For an excellent description of the
OGAS, see William J. Conyngham, "Technology and Decision Making:
Some Aspects of the Development of OGAS," Slavic Review 39
(September 1980):
432.
Conyngham points out that while the
extensive use of computers and other data processing equipment has
progressed, the system is not very efficient:
"The flow of
information through a very complex and centralized hierarchical
structure is in large part responsible for extended lines of
communication and slow feedback characteristics of the system."
This situation is also aggravated by bureaucratic secrecy.
148
consumption.
As Gvishiani et al put it, "Planned and purposeful
development of a country's scientific and technological potential
is governed by objective laws;
it calls for the establishment of
correct proportions between its structural elements and
regulation of factors leading to disproportions."28
Since Soviet
planners believe that science and technology follow "objective
laws" of evolution, the systems approach of managing science is
emerging as a scientific discipline of its own.
And the "science
of science" ostensibly deals with the general laws "governing"
the development of science and technology.
"Its purpose is to
work out both the theoretical foundations for organizing,
planning, and directing scientific activity and a concrete set of
measures dictated by the objective logic of the development of
science and technology."29
Believing in the linear model and the superior ability of
socialism to plan technological progress, the Brezhnev leadership
put pressure on natural scientists and technologists to be
responsive to Party goals.
For example, Rachkov suggests that
the Party has the "leading role" in the management of scientific
research and development.
According to Rachkov, "the party
analyzes the interaction between scientific and social needs;
defines science's strategic goals, as well as its (anticipated)
28Dzhermen Gvishiani, Dmitri Bobryshev, Bentsion Milner and
Vladimir Rapoport, Scientific and Technical Progress and Social
Advance (Moscow: Novosti Press Agency, 1980), 26.
29Dzhermen Gvishiani, "Soviet Science Policy," in Science and
Technology Policies:
Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, ed. Gabor
Strasser and Eugene M. Simons (Cambridge: Ballinger, 1973), 175.
it
149
social and political consequences."30
Perhaps the best
expression of the leading role of the Party in the guidance of
science is Alekseev and Il'in's The Principle of Partiinost' and
Natural Science [Printsip partiinosti i estestvoznanie],
published in 1972, at the time when the STR became very prominent
in Soviet media and literature.
Devoted to reconciling science
with dialectical materialism, they put forth the view that
partiinost' gives scientists the correct "spiritual" orientation
to their work, which is a "revolutionary-critical relationship
toward reality":
"The principle of partiinost' demands devotion
to the ideals of communism and an actively effective
participation in their realization."31
According to Alekseev and
Il'in, partiinost' does not impair the creativity and internal
direction of scientists because the interests and goals of
communism are ostensibly identical with the interests and goals
of science.
Only the "correct partiinyi approach" to scientific
work will enable the scientist to find "objective truth."32
Furthermore, the Brezhnev leadership launched a purge of all
those in the natural sciences who exhibited excessive
individualism and professional independence.
Stephen Fortescue
(research fellow at the University of Birmingham Centre for
Russian and East European Studies), demonstrated that the Primary
Party Organizations (PPOs) at research institutes, which are
30Quoted from Lubrano, Soviet Sociology of Science, 78.
31Ibid, 79.
32Ibid.
150
responsible for what can generally be called the political health
of the institute, began as early as 1964 to hold seminars
countering the influence of bourgeois ideology in Soviet science.
The PPOs stepped up this activity against the dissident
atmosphere of the mid- to late-1960s, and brought it to a climax
in the intense crackdown on dissidence in 1967 with the censure
of the Lebedev institute.33
The nature of the content of these
anti-dissident seminars is revealing:
"A whole network of
politinformatory, both professional and part-time, were used by
PPOs to speak on such topics as 'Ideological diversions of modern
imperialism,' 'The scientific-technical revolution and the
ideological manoeuvres of bourgeois propaganda.'"34 (Emphasis
mine.)
Western versions of the STR were put forth as
ideologically unorthodox, and those who held to such views were
systematically persecuted.35
Part of the fear, no doubt, which
the Party exhibited against the revival of "Mechanism as a
tendency," to use Joravsky's phrase, was the fear of the revival
of technocratic tendencies, which the Large Soviet Encyclopedia
33Stephen Fortescue, The Communist Party and Soviet Science
(London: Macmillan Press, Ltd., 1986), pp. 124-129.
34Ibid, 125-126.
35Ibid. See also Peter Kneen, Soviet Scientists and the State:
An Examination of the Social and Political Aspects of Science in
the USSR (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984), 83-84.
He stated that as the 1960s drew to a close scientists began to
find themselves under increasing pressure to respond more positively
to both the technical and the political demands made by the Party
leadership. . .
The Party press began to identify symptoms of
'humanism' and 'liberalism' which were duly condemned."
151
identifies as a "distorted form" of the reality of the STR.36
With respect to the administration of research institutes,
for example, the position of the director was strengthened to
become the "plenipotentiary" representative of the state, "who
manages the establishment with the rights of one-man management
and bears full responsibility for its work."37
The director is
an extremely important person in research institutes because of
the military organization of the institutes.
Of the director's
responsibilities, the most important are planning the direction
of research and managing scientific workers.38
The interesting
thing about this situation is that the position of institute
director is most typically a Party appointment.39
The state's response to those who espoused the autonomy of
scientists in accordance with the Western version of the STR was
severe repression and intimidation.
Medvedev was forcibly
retained at a psychiatric hospital, despite the testimony of
36A.M. Prokhorov, ed. The Large Soviet Encyclopedia (New York:
Macmillan, 1981), s.v. "Technocratic Theories," by S.M. Men'shikov.
"Technocratic theories reflect in a distorted form the reality of
the scientific and technological revolution, with social production
and government becoming increasingly dependent on the application of
science and the employment of specialists."
37Dzhermen Gvishiani, S.R. Mikulinski and S.A. Kugel, eds. The
Scientific Intelligentsia in the USSR: Structure and Dynamics of
Personnel (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976), 58.
38Ibid, 61-62.
39See Mark Popovsky, Manipulated Science: The Crisis of Science
and Scientists in the Soviet Union Today (New York: Doubleday &
Co., 1979), 30.
152
several psychiatrists who affirmed his basic mental health.40
Sakharov, of course, became the main lightning rod of antibourgeois activity.
His samizdat manuscript entitled Progress,
Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom openly argued that the first
condition for the flourishing of science (and technology) in the
USSR was the autonomy of scientists.41
He also championed a
state system run by scientists.
It is significant that Sakharov's version of the linear
model did not envision the leading role of the Party, in contrast
to the Brezhnev coalition's version.
The state condemned
Sakharov to internal exile, as is well known, and all Soviet
scientists were faced with the choice of either signing a letter
denouncing him, or losing their jobs.
had a dual purpose:
(This campaign no doubt
to condemn Sakharov, and to weed out those
scientists who were too deeply infected with the bourgeois
ideology of science.)
Gauging from the response which the state
took against the best representatives of the traditional linear
model (in which scientists ostensibly play the leading role in
all of technological and social progress free from Party
control), it is clear that the designation of science as a
productive force did not mean that science had been deemed nonideological in nature.
It was not a return to a neo-Mechanist
position as under Lenin and the NTO.
It did not mark the de-
40See Zhores Medvedev and Roy Medvedev, A Question of Madness
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971).
41Anrdei Sakharov, Progress, Coexistence,
Freedom (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1968).
and
Intellectual
153
Stalinization of science:
on the contrary, it marked the re-
Stalinization of science.
Consider the following circumstance.
Shortly after the STR
had been announced as the central part of the 10th five year plan
(1971), M.N. Rutkevich's neo-Deborinite work entitled Dialectical
Materialism came out in print.
In fact, this work marked a new
level of ideological extremism in the Deborinite tradition.
A.M.
Deborin himself merely argued that the laws of dialectic (from
Hegel's philosophy) should be the self-conscious principles
behind the scientist's work;
but Rutkevich went farther than
that, arguing that Marxism is a philosophy able to predict the
future not only of social and political history, but as a science
able to evaluate theories of natural science.42
Rutkevich
argued, in effect, that Marxism is the queen of the sciences, the
supreme arbiter in all scientific matters, not unlike Lysenko's
description of Stalin's council as so full of "power of
scientific prevision," that it made his heart stand still with
pride.43
In order to make sure that the meaning of Marxism was
not lost on the populace, the Ministry of Education adopted
Rutkevich's work as its central textbook for philosophy
departments throughout the USSR.
In accordance with Rutkevich's work, the 24th Party Congress
of 1971 announced changes in the Party rules concerning the
42Loren R. Graham, Science, Philosophy, and Human Behavior in
the Soviet Union (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 5963.
43Zhores Medvedev, The Rise and Fall of T.D. Lysenko (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1969), 135.
154
governing of research institutes which dramatically enhanced the
Party's supervision of research.
PPOs were given the right to
supervise the administration of scientific and scholarly
institutions in which they operated.
"This meant that they were
now empowered to check whether the decisions taken by the
academic council of a research or higher eduction institution
fully accorded with the instructions of higher Party organs."44
Yet while supervising the direction of research, the Party failed
to instill in scientists and technologists attitudes of
partiinost':
Party officials consistently reported that
"scientists frequently lacked the knowledge and the inclination
to bridge the gap between science and politics."45
There were
frequent clashes between researchers and Party members arising
from divergent professional and political values.
Parenthetically, it is worth noting in passing that the CPSU
rejected the idea of convergence (an idea based upon the linear
model) with the West precisely because the idea of convergence
clashed with their own modified linear model.
Olga Matich
pointed out that the reformist intelligentsia adopted the idea of
convergence both because of their hope for a technologically
advanced society and because it buttressed their position within
the system.46
Thus a Party hack (Bessonov) complained that the
44Kneen, Soviet Scientists and the State, 86.
45Ibid, 91.
46Olga Matich, "Vasilii Aksenov and the Literature of
Convergence:
Ostrov Krym as Self-Criticism," Slavic Review 47
(Winter 1988): 642.
155
convergence theory, based upon the alleged objective nonideological growth of science and technological determinism was
nothing more than an attempt to "extend the influence of
bourgeois ideology at the expense of Marxist-Leninist
ideology."47
Soviet theorists attacked the theory of convergence
for supporting the idea that the scientists and technicians will
replace the politicians in "technocratic utopias."48
Indeed, the
USSR's own attempt at "technocratic utopia," in which science was
to have created new culture-transforming technologies, had
already been tried and failed.
Thus, the Party leadership's rival version of the Western
technological revolution was a "modified linear model" which
began with the Party and ended with society.
The STR became the
symbol of the Party's bureaucratic push from the late sixties and
into the eighties.
Fortescue pointed out that "Brezhnev adopted
the STR as a slogan to be used to shake the established
industrial bureaucracies out of their anti-innovatory ways."49
The STR was presented in "politically acceptable terms,"
47B. Bessonov, "The Scientific and Technological Revolution and
the Ideological Struggle," International Affairs, n.s. 2 (1974):
68.
48Leon Goure, Foy D. Kohler, Richard Soll and Annette Stiefbold,
Convergence of Communism and Capitalism: The Soviet View (Miami:
Center for Advanced International Studies, 1973), 11.
See also
Soviet Law and Government, "Guide to Soviet Legal and Political
Terms," Soviet Law and Government Summer 1988:
100.
The term
"convergence" [sblizhenie] in the Soviet lexicon means "the gradual
lessening of social, cultural, and economic distinctions between
Soviet nationalities."
49Fortescue, The Communist Party and Soviet Science, 21.
156
suggesting that "technical development can bring about desirable
social development;
that technical development can bring about
desirable social development only if it is directed and
controlled by a progressive political force, that is, the CPSU;
and that the STR, while able to realize its true potential only
in socialist conditions, is nevertheless a universal
phenomenon."50
Yet the STR was clearly a linear model of technological and
social progress.
For example,
V.G. Afanasev stated that "the
scientific and technological revolution is a dynamic, constantly
improving and developing 'science--technology--production--man'
system in which science plays the leading role."51
Likewise
Mikulinski states that science has become "the leading factor of
technological progress and the development of social
production.52
Likewise, a 1969 editorial in Voprosy filosofii
restated the Marxist-Leninist linear model, saying that the
development of the material basis of a new society could only be
created when the development of science is sufficiently high.
50Ibid, 21.
51V.G. Afanas'ev, "Science and Social Control for Development
Purposes," in Science, Technology and the Future, ed. E.P. Velikhov,
D.M. Gvishiani and S.R. Mikulinski (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1980),
37.
52S.R. Mikulinski, "From the Revolution in the Natural Sciences
to the Scientific and Technological Revolution," in Science,
Technology and the Future, ed. E.P. Velikhov, D.M. Gvishiani and
S.R. Mikulinski (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1980), 77. He adds that
the STR "changes the entire face of social production, the
conditions, character and content of work, and the structure of
productive forces and the social division of labor and, through the
latter, affects the social structure of society."
157
"Therefore, the development of science is considered to be the
most important task of the entire society tantamount to achieving
prosperity."53
But this linear model is one in which the Party ostensibly
controls the process.
Kneen observed, for example, that the
Party hoped its expanding influence among natural scientists and
technologists would influence the researchers toward the
practical needs of production.
"In this way the Party could
achieve the more tangible role in science which had previously
eluded it, and also benefit from the prestige associated with
scientific and technical advance."54
Gvishiani et al clearly
stated, moreover, that the Soviet STR is a controlled, Partydirected process.
"Science and technology in the USSR develop
according to plan."55
They added that the principles for state
planning of technological progress began with Lenin, and "its
basic principles have remained unchanged throughout Soviet times,
and practice has confirmed their objectivity and expediency."56
Likewise, N.P. Fedorenko stated that "natural sciences even in
fundamental research cannot any longer follow their own internal
logic and produce only abstract knowledge.
Emerging as a direct
productive force, science itself becomes the object of planning
53Joint Publications Research Service, Effects of Scientific and
Technological Revolution Reviewed, by Voprosy filosofii. 6 August
1969. JPRS, 48568/1-19.
54Kneen, Soviet Scientists and the State, 89-90.
55Gvishiani et al, Scientific and Technological Progress and
Social Advance, 12.
56Ibid, 22.
158
and control."
It is no exaggeration that the STR, both in theory
and in practice, was "primarily aimed at enhancing centralized
control in order to increase levels of production."57
Problems with the Modified Linear Model
Stalin favored the men of practice over the theorists, with
some justification.
One of the strengths of the Stalinist system
of promoting technological innovation was the emphasis on
practice over and above theory.
As mentioned above (chapter two,
pages 32-36), this is due to the differences between science and
technology:
scientific theory is not always useful when it comes
to the trial and error methods of technological innovation.
Moreover, the Stalinist leadership's decentralization of the
planning of R&D in 1935 under the auspices of the various
ministries relieved central planners of an impossible burden.
By
emphasizing growth of industrial output and letting the
ministries and glavki make their own decisions concerning
technological innovation, the Stalinist leadership did not show
dramatic technological advances, but instead posted a relatively
impressive number of small scale, incremental innovations which
accounted for the bulk of indigenous Soviet technological
progress.58
Despite its crippling faults, this policy created
57Gordon B. Smith, "Socialist Law and the Scientific and
Technical Revolution," in Soviet and East European Law and the
Scientific-Technical Revolution, ed. Gordon B. Smith, Peter B. Maggs
and George Ginsburgs (New York: Pergamon Press, 1981), 16.
58See Amann, Cooper and Davies, eds, The Technological Level of
Soviet Industry, 63. They note that where the management of was
less centralized, evolving from the needs of industry, "the number
of varieties of the new technology developed and put into production
has tended to be surprisingly high." This is not surprising if one
159
more organic connections between R&D and industry than
centralized, nationwide planning of technological progress has
ever been capable of producing.
Brezhnev's modified linear model suffered from the same
types of problems as the traditional linear model under Lenin.
For example, a series of 1968 decrees by the Central Committee
ordered the compilation of long-term scientific-technological
prognoses for the creation of new technologies.
At least five
planning agencies were involved with the decrees (the Academy of
Sciences, the State Committee for Science and Technology, the
State Construction Committee, Gosplan, and the State Committee
for Prices), making the problem of cutting through departmental
barriers acute.59
In 1972, the Party again instructed the
Academy and the State Committee for Science and Technology to
write a fifteen year plan for a "comprehensive program of
scientific-technological progress and its socioeconomic
consequences for 1976-1990 with justifications and
calculations."60
Yet quarrels between the natural scientists and
understands the limitations of the linear model.
See also Alec
Nove, The Soviet Economic System, 3rd ed. (Boston: Allen & Unwin,
1980), 164.
He notes that nonstandardized, special-purpose
equipment, contributing to technological progress are produced "adhoc by the chief mechanical engineer's or other departments of the
users, expending vast quantities of equipment, materials, and labor"
on their production. See also Berliner, The Innovation Decision,
110.
In 1976, the greater part of the 4 million registered
inventions and production-improvement proposals submitted annually
came from engineering departments within enterprises.
59Parrott, Politics and Technology, 282.
60Ibid, 283.
160
the economists over implementation of these plans erupted.
As
late as 1979, the outlines of the fifteen year plan had not been
finalized, let alone completed.
The problem of the mechanistic divisions between the central
planners, R&D institutes and industry persisted.
This is a
central theme of Berliner's outstanding work on innovation in
Soviet industry, which drew most of its sources from the period
directly following Brezhnev's ministerial reorganization and the
Liberman reforms.
His description of the types of problems the
new system encountered fit precisely the description of the
mechanistic organizational type.
The main problem with the applied R&D institutes attached to
the glavki was that they were primarily independent of the
enterprises that used their services.61
As Berliner put it,
"Because of the sharp organizational divisions, technical work
done at one stage may be insufficiently coordinated with that to
be done in later stages.
Design bureaus working on a new
machine, for example, 'often do not know at what enterprises it
will be used.'"62
And Berliner provides overwhelmingly abundant
evidence that the fulfillment of the typical research institute's
"quota" of new technologies had little direct connection with the
actual needs of industry.
Like the production quotas in other
Soviet industries, production quotas in the industrial research
61See Berliner, The Innovation Decision, 99. "The decision to
locate R&D primarily in units that are independent of enterprises
was probably made on the rough judgment that, in purely
organizational terms, it was a superior structural form."
62Ibid, 103.
161
institutes paid little attention to quality, only quantity.
For example, in 1966, an analysis was done of the 45,000
changes in blueprints and drawings which various enterprises made
in the work of the design organizations.
"Sixty-five percent
were found to be the result of simple carelessness, such as
arithmetic errors.
In other cases, inadequate testing obliged
innovating enterprises to make changes in design after production
had begun, which drove up the cost of production, lengthened the
start-up period, and reduced the return to the innovation."63
Another 1967 inquiry into the work of a special engineering
bureau for grinding equipment discovered that the engineers
regularly fulfilled their design quota;
but out of the 57
completed projects, 13 were rejected outright as totally useless,
while 20 more were returned due to fundamental defects in the
work.64
Thus, although fulfilling its production quota of new
projects, only 42 percent of the projects of the engineering
section in question could be considered successful.
Nove
likewise reports that the success indicators of machineryproducing enterprises were, until 1975, stated in tons of
machinery;
other success indicators (i.e., measured in quantity
or in rubles) similarly neglected quality and actual need as
success criteria.65
The lack of organic connections between R&D and industry
63Ibid, 100-101.
64Ibid, 101.
65Alec Nove, The Soviet Economic System, 3rd ed. (Boston:
& Unwin, 1986), 164.
Allen
162
meant that research workers had little incentive to produce
something useful.
Hence, Academician Trapeznikov complained in a
1967 editorial to Pravda that the independence of research
institutes had created a monopoly of power which had resulted in
the stagnation of ideas.
Here is the typical position of the
customer (the industrial enterprise) who is faced with poor work
from the institute, as he described it:
"The customer can only
say to the design organization, 'Please, do at least slightly
better.'
And the monopolistic design organization will answer,
'We can do no better;
if you don't like it, do it yourself!'
And the enterprise will have to content itself with this
answer."66
The main incentives which the Soviet leadership used to spur
technological progress were bonuses.67
problem with that approach:
But there was is a big
If the special bonuses for
innovation were small, the administrator would not take the time
and effort to see that the change was rammed through;
and if the
incentive was very large, managers tended to neglect fulfilling
the production quota, which was also rewarded by a bonus.
Self
interest motivated the Soviet manager as much as any other
manager, and therefore, "the relative size of the bonus for this
or that special purpose often determines the manager's decision
to concentrate on this or that objective."68
Soviet
66Berliner, The Innovation Decision, 121.
67See Joseph Berliner, Soviet Industry from Stalin to Gorbachev:
Essays on Management and Innovation (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell
University Press, 1988), 202.
68Ibid, 81.
163
administrators tended to concentrate on the larger bonuses and
pay little attention to the small ones.
And there were no
bonuses for the orgtekhplan, the small-scale innovations and
organizational improvements which cumulatively account for
majority of improvements in efficiency.69
"Thus the very potency
of the bonus as an incentive militates against its use for too
many special purposes which may compete with each other."70
Moreover, since the success of enterprise management was
determined above all else by fulfillment of production plans,
administrators avoided innovation, since this invariably involved
disruption of productive processes.71
Berliner stated his
agreement with Nove's assessment, pointing out that plan
fulfillment is the first objective of management, "not only
because it is the principal criterion of performance, but because
a large portion of the manager's monthly take-home pay was tied
to it.
Plan fulfillment added approximately 20-50 percent to
one's base salary, compared to the average of about 1 percent
earned for successful innovations."72
Another reason why innovation was not in the enterprise
director's interests was the fact that they generally do not
remain in their positions for very long.
While the kinks are
being ironed out of the new technology and new supplies (if
69See Amann, Cooper and Davies, eds., The Technological Level of
Soviet Industry, chapter 2.
70Berliner, Soviet Industry from Stalin to Gorbachev, 81.
71See Nove, The Soviet Economic System, 161.
72Berliner, Soviet Industry from Stalin to Gorbachev, 202.
164
required) are being procured either through official channels or
the tolkachi, several successive periods of plan underfulfillment
may have ensued.
This leaves a black mark on the director's
report card, and severely hurts his chances for upward mobility
into the ranks of the glavki bureaucracy.
With every innovation,
"there is likelihood that the current plan will suffer, and so
will the incomes of many employees, as well as the standing of
the manager himself."73
Furthermore, with each innovation, the compulsory planindicators are raised to match the new productive capabilities.
Thus, "a successful innovation that fits into the established
indicators positively is quite likely to be followed by an
arbitrary upward change in these indicators, or downward
amendment of the norms applicable to payments into the incentive
funds."74
And new products which the firm may produce as a
result of new technical capabilities may be priced at levels
lower than the older standard products based upon older
technologies.75
Understandably, few administrators want to raise
their production quotas.
In addition, Soviet managers are
required by law to send their engineers--at their own expense--
73Nove, The Soviet Economic System, 161.
74Ibid, 161. As one Soviet economist, Bunich, pointed out in an
article in Pravda, "since the enterprises themselves, to put it
mildly, do not strive to achieve the greatest return from
technological innovation, the state is compelled to exert pressure.
The number of plan-directives in the area of scientific and
technical progress grows." From Ibid, 164-165.
75Berliner, Soviet Industry from Stalin to Gorbachev, 203.
165
throughout the country to demonstrate to others how they
accomplished their innovation and what they learned from the
experience.76
This is a real disincentive to undertake in-house
R&D and innovation.
The main problem which the typically conservative Soviet
manager faces in technological innovation is the problem of
supply, which is well known as a structural flaw with the Soviet
command economy.77
"The core of the matter," argues Berliner,
"is that managers simply don't trust the planning system to
provide them with the supplies and materials they need in the
right quantity and quality, and at the right time."78
flaw is exacerbated in the case of innovation.
And this
If technological
innovation (which often requires inputs of new resources) is to
succeed in the Soviet system, it requires a corresponding change
in the pattern of inflow if inputs.79
"It may require new
materials with which the producer is unfamiliar.
It may require
new sources of supply and the establishment of commercial
relations with new producing units with whom the innovator is
76Berliner, The Innovation Decision, 99.
77See Paul Gregory and Robert C. Stuart, Soviet Economic
Structure and Performance, 3rd ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1986),
134. The overambitious plans forced upon managers forces them to
stockpile resources, which can then be used for future plan
fulfillment (supplies are received erratically), or which can be
used for trading, or for overstating input requirements to his
superiors. This tendency creates a situation in which supply is a
continual problem.
78Berliner, Soviet Industry from Stalin to Gorbachev, 74.
79Berliner, The Innovation Decision, 61.
166
unacquainted.
The new supplier may have different modes of
operation and may be unfamiliar with the procedures and needs of
his new customer."80
All these factors make innovation an
extremely risky business for the Soviet manager.
If current
arrangements with suppliers are in order and functioning
smoothly, why should the Soviet manager adopt an innovation which
might not only raise the production quota, but also threaten his
system of supply?
Sometimes, the Soviet manager had no choice in the matter:
he may have been forced to simply act on an order from a Party or
government boss;
but generally, he had a range of choices, and
the decision to innovate was the least attractive of them all.
In general, "the avoidance of innovation is a device for
minimizing uncertainty over supply."81
And "the greater the
scale of the proposed innovation, the greater the magnitude of
the supply problems to be anticipated.
And the greater the
unreliability of the system of supply, the greater the resistance
to innovation."82
innovating mangers.
"For want of a nail" is a parable employed by
Often the lack of a few basic items may
cripple even entirely new production facilities.
The Limits of Bureaucratic Push
The Brezhnev government's response to the failure of the
mechanistic system to produce innovation was another series of
80Ibid.
81Ibid, 73.
82Ibid.
167
reorganizational reforms aimed at creating stronger organic links
between the R&D institutes and the enterprises which they served.
This marked the origins of the attempt to dissolve the glavki
and replace them with "production associations" or "scientificproduction associations," which included industrial R&D
institutes.
The idea behind this reorganization was to
facilitate both better supply and technical progress by bringing
producers and consumers under one administrative umbrella.
With
respect to the "scientific-production associations," the supply
of R&D inputs was to become an organic part of production rather
than independent services.
The 1973 decree clearly stated, for
example, that the principal goal was "the organic combining of
the achievements of science and technology with the advantages of
the socialist economic system."83
Predictably, as researchers are forced to work on practical
problems with little theoretical interest, many researchers
expressed fears that they would be "dissolved" in the work of
production and that "science may wither away."84
Resistance to
83A.P.
Dumachev,
"Party
Organizations
and
Production
Associations," Soviet Law and Government 14 (Summer 1975): 4. See
also Zaleski, "Planning and Financing of Research and Development,"
in Soviet Science and Technology:
Domestic and Foreign
Perspectives, ed. John R. Thomas and Ursula Kruse-Vaucienne
(Washington, D.C.: The National Science Foundation, 1977), 279.
The 1973 legislation was an embellishment of a 1968 decree
endeavoring to stimulate innovation by creating "optimum ties"
between R&D and industry.
See also Lewis, Science and
Industrialization, 122. The first scientific production association
was in the early thirties when the Central Radio Laboratory in
Leningrad was merged with the Comintern Radio Factory. Even then,
"the links between institute and enterprise remained tenuous."
84Leon Smolenski, "Towards a Socialist Corporation:
Soviet
168
these new organizations came from industrial administrators as
well, due to the attempt to retain bureaucratic autonomy.
"Prominent among the lower-level opponents of [scientificproduction] associations were enterprise directors, who
apparently feared that a local association, because it could stay
better informed about their than a ministerial glavk, would
further circumscribe their autonomy.
One Party official remarked
that some directors resisted associations out of a fear of losing
their 'social position,' since they were presently members of the
borough party committee and were subordinate directly to
Moscow."85
Dumachev stated that, to many who had grown
accustomed to regarding the enterprise as the basic unit in
industry, "it is not easy to reconcile themselves to the idea
that it is necessary to remove this level of independence and
that all its major functions should be transferred to the
association."86
Dumachev makes it clear that the main role of the Party is
in overcoming these mechanistic barriers.
The Party ostensibly
organizes "objective factors" against "subjective ones," thus
promoting "the cohesion of all personnel of the association into
a single production collective."87
And the central role of the
Industrial Reorganization of 1973" Journal of Political Economics 20
(Winter 1974): 33.
85Parrott, Politics and Technology, 288.
86Dumachev, "Party Organizations and Production Associations,"
7.
87Ibid, 9.
169
Party in the production associations is in supervising
technological innovation, guiding the work from research through
development to application.
Dumachev thus reports a reduction in
lead time in the development of new technologies:
"Prior to the
founding of the association, it took from two to five years to
bring new products into production.
Now the time needed for
research and development work has been reduced by an average of
18 percent, and the entire cycle from beginning of research to
serial manufacture has been cut by one-half to two-thirds."88
Dumachev states that the "intimate connections" between the Party
organizations and enterprises facilitates technological progress.
Yet clearly, the Party was not equal to the task of
overcoming bureaucratic resistance.
For example, in April of
1973, the Soviet leadership decreed a general reorganization of
industry to make the production association the standard
administrative structure.
The Central Committee ordered the
industrial ministries to submit reorganizational plans within the
following six months, abolishing most ministerial glavki and
replacing them with production associations.
By 1975, however,
the number of scientific-production associations numbered only
110, while the number of production associations numbered 2,200.
By 1978, the Party had supervised the construction of a mere 150
scientific-production associations which had previously comprised
520 enterprises and 120 scientific research institutes and design
bureaus.89
By the end of 1976, there were over 3,000 production
88Ibid, 12.
89Smolenski, "Towards a Socialist Corporation," 33.
170
associations.90
Yet these figures represent only a quarter of
all enterprises to have been merged by the end of 1975.91
The
slow pace of reorganization forced the Party to continually push
back the timetable for complete reorganization.92
Moreover, the
independence of many enterprises were apparently not "dissolved"
by the mergers, with the glavki retaining significant
administrative control in many cases.
Furthermore, the attempt to create a top-down "systems
approach" to technological innovation was crippled by the
supervision of a plethora of small-scale innovations which the
pressures of the market usually produce.
For example, Nove
reports that a plan for the introduction of new technology in
Ukraine envisaged 2,900 measures.93
Obviously, the attempt to
oversee and control this process is absurd, even by Soviet
standards.
In this respect, Lewin is correct when he states that
"the bigger the effort to supervise, to check, to censor, and to
curb, the stronger the factors that work to paralyze the very
tools able to do the job."94
Hence, in 1981 Aganbegian reported that the rate of and
90Zaleski, "Planning and Financing of Research," 279.
91Berliner, The Innovation Decision, 144.
92Parrott, "Technological Progress and Soviet Politics," in
Soviet Science and Technology: Domestic and Foreign Perspectives
(Washington, D.C.: The National Science Foundation, 1977), 316.
93Nove, The Soviet Economic System, 160.
94Moshe Lewin,
Debates (Princeton:
Political Undercurrents of Soviet Economic
Princeton University Press, 1974), 296.
171
absolute growth in capital investments in the USSR was continuing
to decline sharply.95
Between 1950 and 1955, for example,
investment in capital stock was 12.5 percent of GNP;
but between
1970 and 1975, investment had declined to 6.9 percent.96
Moreover, it is clear that this capital stock does not represent
investment in particularly productive technologies, since the
increase in capital stock rose proportionally higher than
output.97
Without "market pull," many of the new technologies
did not prove to be more efficient than the ones they replaced.
Nove illustrates this point when he describes the Party's
frustration at successful innovation which paid little attention
to greater efficiency or profitability.
Gorbachev and the STR
Like Brezhnev and Andropov before him, Gorbachev's answer to
the Soviet economic slowdown has been technological progress, the
transition of the economy from the extensive to the intensive
path of growth.
The economic growth of the USSR has slowed from
about 5 percent a year in the 1960s to around 2 percent in the
1980s.
And the main cause of this slowdown is the decline in the
rate of productivity, that is, "the efficiency with which each
employed person produces goods and services."98
Gorbachev's
95Abel Aganbegian, "The Path to Perfecting the Technology of
Planning," Soviet Law and Government 23 (Winter 1982-1983): 6.
96Abram Bergson, "The Soviet Economic Slowdown," Challenge 20
(January-February 1978): 24.
97Abram Bergson, "Toward a New Growth Model," Problems of
Communism 22 (March-April 1973): 7.
98Bailes,
"Science
and
Technology
in
the
Soviet
Union:
172
strategy is to increase this rate of productivity through massive
investments in more efficient technology.
As Aganbegian wrote in
1985, "The Party considers that the stimulation of the economy,
its transition to an intensive basis, as well as a comprehensive
increase in efficiency are crucial conditions for the further
development of Soviet society and a key area of social progress.
There are no alternatives to this line in our country."99
One
sees in this statement a sense of urgency about the failure of
the system to produce technological progress.
And one hears in
these words the same old cliches about the STR and its ability to
create technologies "which require few operations and are of high
intensity and reliability, as well as to the introduction of lowwaste and wasteless technology, comprehensive mechanization, and
automation."100
This is absolutely nothing new.
This strategy
is so old that it is surprising that anyone would perceive it as
new.
The main difference between Gorbachev and Brezhnev, however,
concerns the relative amount of independence given to the STI to
direct technological innovation.
Whereas the Brezhnev leadership
Historical Background and Contemporary Problems," 69.
99Abel Aganbegian, "The Strategy for Accelerating Socioeconomic
Development," Soviet Law and Government 25 (Fall 1986): 28-29. See
also Ibid, 70. "The remedy for the slowdown in economic growth, as
Soviet economists see it, is better applied science and technology-for example, the wide-scale application of computers, greater
automation through the use of robotics, etc., and more efficient
forms of organization, including better material incentives for
improved work performance."
100Ibid, 35.
173
supported direct Party supervision of the STI with respect to
technological innovation, the Gorbachev leadership appears to
have reverted to the failed policies of Lenin, Bukharin and
Khrushchev of giving freedom to the STI based upon faith in the
linear model.
At the 27th Party Congress, the First Secretary
singled out the poor performance of the STI with respect to
technological innovation.
However, he promised them better
working conditions, including more freedom to guide the direction
of their own work.
In return, he said that the country had the
right to expect "discoveries and inventions that ensure genuinely
revolutionary changes in the development of science and
technology."101
Moreover, Gorbachev's policy of according
greater institutional freedom to the STI meant a return to an
emphasis on fundamental research over and above applied research.
As Aganbegian put it:
"The task is now to accelerate the pace
of development of basic research as a source of new knowledge and
a theoretical basis for fundamentally new technology.
The
Academy of Sciences of the USSR will attach greater importance to
the development of basic research in engineering."102
Moreover,
in alignment with the linear model, the Academy of Sciences and
the highly centralized State Committee for Science and Technology
jointly wrote the draft plan for the "comprehensive" program for
progress in science and technology for the period 1986 to 2000.
101Gary Taubes and Glenn Garelik, "Soviet Science:
It?" Discover, n.s. 8 (August 1986): 39.
How Good Is
102Aganbegian, "The Strategy for Accelerating Socioeconomic
Development," 38.
174
By "fundamentally speeding up scientific and technological
progress," Nikolai Ryzhkov said, this would allow the USSR to
double its wealth and prosperity by the year 2000.
This
ludicrous idea that the STI can plan both science and technology
(two fundamentally different processes) remains a central pillar
of the Soviet state.
By giving the STI more freedom to choose
their own projects without a system of incentives for engineers
to really produce something, without organic linkages between
social need and R&D, it appears likely that the Gorbachev
leadership has simply written a prescription for poor
technological performance, as under Lenin and Khrushchev.
Without market mechanisms in place, Gorbachev's current attempt
to completely separate the Party from the Government will prove
disastrous with respect to technological progress.
Signs that
this prescription has brought about the same results are already
beginning to appear.
Conclusions
It would be a stretch of the imagination to say that the
Soviet approach to technological development during the STR has
been characterized by the "intensive" path of progress.
the following quote by Dzhermen Gvishiani:
Consider
"In an epoch when
science is ever increasingly revealed as a direct productive
force, individual achievements, however brilliant, are no longer
the most important, but a high scientific and technological level
of production as a whole."103
The modified linear model under
103Gvishiani et al, The Scientific Intelligentsia, 18.
175
Brezhnev failed to allow for spontaneity and "serendipity,"
allowing truly radical but efficient ideas to come to the fore.
As one commentator put it, the gifted inventor frequently goes
unappreciated in this system:
managers consider it better to
support "the ideas of a handful of eggheads, than to lose one
especially talented 'idea generator' who might unexpectedly
produce an invention that will determine the firm's successful
development for many years to come."104
Leopold Labedz was quite correct when he refuted the
commonplace idea that technological development is incompatible
with totalitarianism.105
Likewise, Zhores Medvedev correctly
criticized American policy makers for having failed to realize
the capacity of totalitarian states to concentrate their efforts
on particular technological developments.
Comparing Nazi Germany
unfavorably to the USSR, Medvedev suggested that "totalitarian
states with a capitalist economy (like Hitler's Germany) are not
able to reprogram industry and science with the efficiency and
speed of a socialist totalitarian country where all the means of
production, education, and research are in the state's
control."106
With respect to the Stalinist system during the
104V.P. Rassokhin, "Centralization and Freedom of Creativity in
Science and Technology," Soviet Law and Government 27 (Summer 1988):
64.
105See Leopold Labedz, "How Free Is Soviet Science? Technology
under Totalitarianism," in The Sociology of Science, ed. Bernard
Barber and Walter Hirsch (New York:
The Free Press of Glencoe,
1962), 140.
106Zhores Medvedev, Soviet Science, (New York:
Co., 1978), 143.
W.W. Norton &
176
war, these statements are quite true.
But it is an altogether different matter in times of peace
without state terror as an instrument of motivation.
The post-
war period of Soviet technological development is thus
characterized by the "broken-link rule," which means that
whenever the USSR gets one aspect of a technology down pat, there
is usually at least one faulty link somewhere in the chain that
causes the project either to break down or to be slowed
considerably.107
Balzer refers to this as "the best and the
rest" rule, in which investment of resources in military
technology (with little or no civilian "spin off") dominated the
Party's efforts at cutting through red tape.108
Without
spontaneous feedback mechanisms which foster innovation
incrementally in "clusterings" (or in "systems"), improvements in
one part of the system are of limited value without simultaneous
improvements in other parts, "just as the auditory benefits of a
high-quality amplifier are lost when it is connected to a hi-fi
107See Taubes and Garelik, "Soviet Science: How Good Is It?,"
51. They cite an example of this rule in the development of the
double-heterodyne laser, used in compact disc players, which
required "across-the board" development of technology (such as room
temperature semiconductors). Although the Soviets were the world
leaders in the initial development of this technology, Western
corporations like idea made it practicable.
108Harley D. Balzer, Soviet Science on the Edge of Reform
(Boulder:
Westview Press, 1989), 37.
See also Ronald Amann,
"Soviet Technological Performance," in Soviet Science and
Technology: Domestic and Foreign Perspectives, ed. John R. Thomas
and Ursula Kruse-Vaucienne (Washington, DC: The National Science
Foundation, 1977), 334.
He suggests that Soviet technological
performance in high priority military areas is relatively good
compared with the lower priority areas of civilian technology.
177
set with a low-quality loudspeaker."109
what one sees happening in the USSR:
And this is, in fact,
"Everywhere in the USSR the
technologically most advanced and most backward are to be
observed side by side.
There is centralization of the highest
order and at the same time failure to achieve some of the
putative advantages of centralization;
for instance,
surprisingly modest progress has been made in the field of
industrial standards."110
The problem with the Soviet system can be simply reduced to
the inadequacy of the linear model, which is the foundation of
state planning of both science and technology.
With respect to
the jigsaw puzzle called science, there is enormous competition
among scientists to be the first to make an important discovery,
to lay a piece of the puzzle down.
Where the puzzle is ready to
receive a piece, for example, scientists spontaneously gravitate
toward that area, a phenomenon known as "fashion" in science.
Hence, the problem with the planning of science is that one never
knows which direction the puzzle will lead.
to the very nature of science.
And it is inimical
As Polanyi pointed out, "No
committee of scientists, however distinguished, could forecast
the further progress of science except for the routine extension
of the existing system.
No important scientific advance could
ever be foretold by such a committee."111
Therefore, the
109Nathan Rosenburg, "Technological Interdependence in the
American Economy," Technology and Culture 20 (January 1979): 26-27.
110Gregory Grossman, "Knowledge, Information, and Innovation in
the Soviet Economy," American Economic Review (May 1966): 127.
111Polanyi, The Logic of Liberty, 89.
178
organization of science can be done in no other way than by
granting complete independence to scientists.
Technology, on the other hand, is more amenable to planning.
We know that the creation of technology comes in response to
human need.
And we are able to predict human need.
But the
planning of technological developments--especially if it is based
upon the development of science--excludes an enormous range of
technological possibilities and technological solutions which can
not be foreseen.
We know, for example, that the depletion of
fossil fuels will require the development of other forms of
energy;
but the types of technologies created and diffused will
depend upon a host of social, cultural, and market forces which
no one can predict.
fusion;
Perhaps someone will find a way to do
or perhaps someone will make photoelectric cells which
create greater amounts of electricity.
Perhaps there will be
combinations of all of these technologies.
Whatever the answer,
the development of these technologies will depend upon
spontaneous self-regulating mechanisms allowing these
developments to proceed incrementally.
And no committee of
geniuses can possibly plan these innovations.