Author: Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 834
Book Description
Soviet Engineering Research
Author: Soviet Science and Engineering in the Shadow of the Cold War
Author: Hiroshi IchikawaPublisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351374222
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 322
Book Description
The 1950s were a vital time in the history of science. In accordance with the intensification of the Cold War, many scientific talents were mobilized to several military-related research and development projects not only in the United States, but also in the Soviet Union. Contrary to the expectation of General Leslie Groves, a leader of the Manhattan Project, the Soviet Union succeeded in their nuclear weapon development in a very short time. And then, by the end of the decade, mankind reached the dawn of the Atomic Age proper with the beginning of the operation of the world’s first civil nuclear power plant in Obninsk in 1954. The risky and costly developments of new weapons such as rockets, jet warplanes, and computers were achieved by the Soviet Union in a very short time after World War II in spite of the heavy economic damage caused by the battles with German troops in Soviet territory. Why were such a great number of scientific talents mobilized to various Soviet Cold War research and development projects? What were the true natures, and real consequences of the rushed Cold War projects? How did Soviet scientists approach the nuclear age? Thanks to the study of formerly classified Soviet archives, a more nuanced view of Soviet society has become possible. To resolve the above-mentioned questions, Ichikawa analyses the complicated interactions among various factors, including the indigenous contradictions in the historical development of science in the Soviet Union; conflicts among the related interest groups; relationships with the political leadership and the military, the role of ideology and others.
Soviet Engineering Research
Author: Russian Engineering Research
Author: The Ghost of the Executed Engineer
Author: Loren GrahamPublisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674254171
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 168
Book Description
Stalin ordered his execution, but here Peter Palchinsky has the last word. As if rising from an uneasy grave, Palchinsky’s ghost leads us through the miasma of Soviet technology and industry, pointing out the mistakes he condemned in his time, the corruption and collapse he predicted, the ultimate price paid for silencing those who were not afraid to speak out. The story of this visionary engineer’s life and work, as Loren Graham relates it, is also the story of the Soviet Union’s industrial promise and failure. We meet Palchinsky in pre-Revolutionary Russia, immersed in protests against the miserable lot of laborers in the tsarist state, protests destined to echo ironically during the Soviet worker’s paradise. Exiled from the country, pardoned and welcomed back at the outbreak of World War I, the engineer joined the ranks of the Revolutionary government, only to find it no more open to criticism than the previous regime. His turbulent career offers us a window on debates over industrialization. Graham highlights the harsh irrationalities built into the Soviet system—the world’s most inefficient steel mill in Magnitogorsk, the gigantic and ill-conceived hydroelectric plant on the Dnieper River, the infamously cruel and mislocated construction of the White Sea Canal. Time and again, we see the effects of policies that ignore not only the workers’ and consumers’ needs but also sound management and engineering precepts. And we see Palchinsky’s criticism and advice, persistently given, consistently ignored, continue to haunt the Soviet Union right up to its dissolution in 1991. The story of a man whose gifts and character set him in the path of history, The Ghost of the Executed Engineer is also a cautionary tale about the fate of an engineering that disregards social and human issues.
How Not to Network a Nation
Author: Benjamin PetersPublisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262034182
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 313
Book Description
How, despite thirty years of effort, Soviet attempts to build a national computer network were undone by socialists who seemed to behave like capitalists. Between 1959 and 1989, Soviet scientists and officials made numerous attempts to network their nation—to construct a nationwide computer network. None of these attempts succeeded, and the enterprise had been abandoned by the time the Soviet Union fell apart. Meanwhile, ARPANET, the American precursor to the Internet, went online in 1969. Why did the Soviet network, with top-level scientists and patriotic incentives, fail while the American network succeeded? In How Not to Network a Nation, Benjamin Peters reverses the usual cold war dualities and argues that the American ARPANET took shape thanks to well-managed state subsidies and collaborative research environments and the Soviet network projects stumbled because of unregulated competition among self-interested institutions, bureaucrats, and others. The capitalists behaved like socialists while the socialists behaved like capitalists. After examining the midcentury rise of cybernetics, the science of self-governing systems, and the emergence in the Soviet Union of economic cybernetics, Peters complicates this uneasy role reversal while chronicling the various Soviet attempts to build a “unified information network.” Drawing on previously unknown archival and historical materials, he focuses on the final, and most ambitious of these projects, the All-State Automated System of Management (OGAS), and its principal promoter, Viktor M. Glushkov. Peters describes the rise and fall of OGAS—its theoretical and practical reach, its vision of a national economy managed by network, the bureaucratic obstacles it encountered, and the institutional stalemate that killed it. Finally, he considers the implications of the Soviet experience for today's networked world.
Distillation Engineering Research and Development in the USSR.
Author: United States Department of Commerce. Office of Technical ServicesPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Chemistry
Languages : en
Pages : 22
Book Description
The Ghost of the Executed Engineer
Author: Loren GrahamPublisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674354364
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 168
Book Description
Stalin ordered his execution, but here Peter Palchinsky has the last word. As if rising from an uneasy grave, Palchinsky’s ghost leads us through the miasma of Soviet technology and industry, pointing out the mistakes he condemned in his time, the corruption and collapse he predicted, the ultimate price paid for silencing those who were not afraid to speak out. The story of this visionary engineer’s life and work, as Loren Graham relates it, is also the story of the Soviet Union’s industrial promise and failure. We meet Palchinsky in pre-Revolutionary Russia, immersed in protests against the miserable lot of laborers in the tsarist state, protests destined to echo ironically during the Soviet worker’s paradise. Exiled from the country, pardoned and welcomed back at the outbreak of World War I, the engineer joined the ranks of the Revolutionary government, only to find it no more open to criticism than the previous regime. His turbulent career offers us a window on debates over industrialization. Graham highlights the harsh irrationalities built into the Soviet system—the world’s most inefficient steel mill in Magnitogorsk, the gigantic and ill-conceived hydroelectric plant on the Dnieper River, the infamously cruel and mislocated construction of the White Sea Canal. Time and again, we see the effects of policies that ignore not only the workers’ and consumers’ needs but also sound management and engineering precepts. And we see Palchinsky’s criticism and advice, persistently given, consistently ignored, continue to haunt the Soviet Union right up to its dissolution in 1991. The story of a man whose gifts and character set him in the path of history, The Ghost of the Executed Engineer is also a cautionary tale about the fate of an engineering that disregards social and human issues.
Science Policy in the Soviet Union
Author: Paul M. CocksPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Research
Languages : en
Pages : 354
Book Description
The Relationship Between Science and the Military in the Soviet Union
Author: Simon KasselPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Military research
Languages : en
Pages : 53
Book Description
The report analyzes open Soviet basic and applied science research for its possible contribution to development of military technology. As the national planner and evaluator of research and manager of the science and technology information service, the State Committee for Science and Technology cannot be entirely divorced from the early stages of military RDT and E. The research projects of the Academy of Sciences, USSR, include many whose exact American equivalents are either performed or funded by DOD agencies. Ten specific examples are analyzed. There seems no need for such research to be duplicated in secret military facilities, as some believe. Censorship cannot be the only reason why basic research articles so far exceed engineering development reports in number and sophistication, since this is equally true of the technology of automobiles, TV, and cameras. The Soviets are frankly anxious to publish scientific research to maintain international prestige and give their major researchers entree into meetings and conferences where useful information can be gained.