Abstract
Scientific-technical borrowings are one of those types of scientific support for the work of industrial sectors, whose role in the conditions of exiting the crisis to acquiring the particular importance. Since the mid-1920s, they have become the main how of scientific support for the organization of the development of Ukrainian electric machine-building industry in the context of large-scale electrification of the country. That was due to the need for a quick withdrawal of this industry from the previous crisis in the absence in the Ukrainian SSR of its own scientific support system for the electric machine engineering. The first form of scientific-technical borrowings for the republican segment of the Soviet Union profile industry was the agreement between the State Electrotechnical Trust and the German electrotechnical company Allgemeine Elektricitäts Gesellschaft on scientific-technical cooperation. The main objective of this act was to achieve at the lowest possible financial cost the fastest possible increase in productivity of the Kharkiv Electromechanical Plant. To do this, it was supposed using the American technologies for the production of electrical machines but implemented them on German technological equipment. Allgemeine Elektricitäts Gesellschaft was the company that already made such it at the beginning of the twentieth century using the technologies of the General Electric Company. Moreover, in the pre-Soviet period, it made an attempt to hold a similar act at the Kharkiv Electromechanical Plant, which it owned in this time; however it ended in failure due to the revolutionary upheavals that began in Ukraine. Thus, the agreement concluded with the German company was a continuation of the same actions, what itself had begun, but, already in new historical realities. That is, the Allgemeine Elektricitäts Gesellschaft actions were copied by the Soviet government, however, adapted to the Soviet way of organizing industrial production. Despite the fundamental difference between the latter and the working conditions of the Allgemeine Elektricitäts Gesellschaft in Germany, the concentration of the parties precisely on the scientific and technical component of the project made it possible to achieve the expected result in full. However, at the same time, Ukrainian electric machine builders focused specifically on the speed of duplication of scientific-technical knowledge missed the opportunity to study the methodology for obtaining them. This became the reason that these scientific-technical borrowings did not become the proper basis for the formation of the scientific component of the scientific-technical potential of the domestic electric machine-building industry.
Highlights
Scientific and technical borrowings in the industry is a fairly common way to improve the technical level of products and the productivity of enterprises, since they do not require significant time for the necessary preliminary research and development work (R&D)
The absence in the Ukrainian SSR at the beginning of the 1920s of specialists in the field of designing electric machines, as well as those competent in the technologies for their production, as well as the shortage of specialized R&D centers, were caused by the fact that in the pre-Soviet period of development of the industry, due to the industrial policy pursued by the tsarist government, electric machine engineering was concentrated in the Russian branches of foreign firms
The implementation of large-scale scientific-technical borrowings from abroad in the field of electric machine engineering in the mid-1920s in Ukraine became an objective necessity, caused by the lack of domestic scientific support for the industry, sufficient to organize, first of all, its productivity at least at the minimum level required by the country's electrification process
Summary
Scientific and technical borrowings in the industry is a fairly common way to improve the technical level of products and the productivity of enterprises, since they do not require significant time for the necessary preliminary research and development work (R&D). The conditions of the large-scale electrification that has been carried out in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (UkSSR) since the mid-1920s were just these for domestic electric machine-building, which at that time take the scientific-technical assistance from the German Allgemeine Elektricitäts Gesellschaft (AEG) This assistance can be considered as a form of scientific and technical borrowings implementation by the Ukrainian segment of the Soviet specialized industry, the reasons, essence and results of which require special study in the context of summarizing the historical experience of using scientific and technical borrowings. The fundamental role of Western electrical engineering firms in the development of republican electric machine engineering is noted in the monographs “Foundations of a Planned Economy 1926–1929” (Carr & Davies, 1978) and “The Structural Origins of Soviet Industrial Expansion” (Hutchings, 1984) These studies are filled only with a statement of the facts of scientific and technical cooperation, as well as a listing (often incomplete) of the types of electric machines with production which this cooperation was related. Sutton does not adequately cover the background to the conclusion of an agreement on scientific-technical assistance with AEG, which makes it impossible to objectively establish the reasons for this event
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