Soviet Engineers and the West European/ North American Legacy, 1917-1930s

Abstract
Were Soviet engineers less good than those in the West in the crucial years of the two first five-year plans? Did the Soviet government ruin the engineering education? These questions form the background of the present article. The answer follows three different lines. The first line is the quality of engineering education in the late Russian empire. The second is the Soviet demand for foreign, primarily American and German, engineers during the first two five-year plans. The third line is the ideological propaganda, set going by Stalin in 1928 and continued until the war, that engineers were liable to be enemies of the state (O. Kryshtanovskaia). Both the US positive attitude to the USSR and the Soviet anti-engineering policy “were swept under the rug” (T. Hughes) during the Cold War.

Keywords
Engineers, education, Soviet Union, American engineers, industrialisation, bureaucracy

Cite this paper
Rolf Torstendahl, Soviet Engineers and the West European/ North American Legacy, 1917-1930s , SCIREA Journal of Sociology. Volume 9, Issue 3, June 2025 | PP. 165-187. 10.54647/sociology841388

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