“Small-scale aviation”: children’s technical working in the USSR in the 1920s

Abstract

In the 1920s, the development of youth’s technical creativity became one of the important tasks undertaken by the Soviet authorities. This period is featured by numerous experiments diligently conducted by the Soviet government having its aim to set up a new world. Innovations affected, among the other things, the sphere of education and leisure. The reasons resulted in establishing of the children's technical stations network are discussed in this paper. Their activity is analysed having in mind the necessity to introduce young technicians to the heroic forms of socialist creating, one of which included the aviation. Enormous interest in the air force caused an influx of children and adolescents into aircraft modelling clubs. The authors consider the goals, objectives, organisational structure of children's technical stations and circles, evaluate their role in the development of Soviet aviation. The study led authors to the conclusion that children's technical stations and aircraft modelling clubs laid foundations to the technical literacy in general and acted as a “social lift” due to the interrelation of aircraft modelling and gliding sports with the professional pilots’ training system for the Air Force, and the USSR Civil Air Fleet.