The Development of Russian History of Technology in the 20th Century

Abstract

On the 28th of February, 1932, the General Assembly of the USSR Academy of Sciences adopted a resolution on the reorganization of the History of Knowledge Commission (KIZ) into the Institute for the History of Science and Technology (IINT) of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The past 90 years have demonstrated scientific and practical importance of the new discipline, history of science and technology. Its history-of-technology component has played an important role in the development of this discipline. The article analyzes the path traveled by the history of technology as well as the most important results in engineering and technology, obtained both by the IHST researchers and their colleagues from other research and educational institutions. Considerable attention in the article is given to the early period of formation of the history of science. The impact of difficult Soviet prewar realities on science in general and on the tragic fate of IINT (the arrest of its director, N. I. Bukharin, invectives addressed to the Institute, and its shutting down) is analyzed. The author emphasizes that, during the period under study, the history of technology community continued with their research, and points out to the works of B. L. Bogoslovskii, V. V. Danilevskii (also spelled Danilevsky), A. A. Radtsig, S. T. Strumilin, and others. The organizational and administrative revival of the history of technology dates back to 1942 and is reviewed in the context of historical meeting of V. L. Komarov, President of the USSR Academy of Sciences, with I. V. Stalin, the head of state, during which it was deemed advisable to reinstate the Institute for the History of Science (IIE). What distinguished the history of technology in the second half of the 20th century was its steady, systemic development. Everything was changing: the configuration and balance of research priorities, methodological toolkit and the forms of studies, standards and themes of scientific work, staff, social context, and funding. The collective and individual monographs alternated as predominant forms of scientific output. The diversity of genres correlated closely with staff dynamics. The author focuses on the important role of paternalism of the foremost Soviet scientists in the history of technology. One of the main factors of disciplinary stability was the pursuit of new knowledge. In this context, the main theme clusters and their ideologists were: factographic, including field, studies (V. V. Danilevskii); current scientific and technological revolution (S. V. Shukhardin); technical sciences (Yu. S. Meleshchenko); and theoretical and methodological matrix of the technical world (I. Ya. Konfederatov). The author writes about today’s marketplace realities with undisguised worry for the future of the discipline. The sources used in this article are collective and individual monographs on the history of machines and technical sciences, publications in the journal “Voprosy istorii estestvoznaniia i tekhniki” (Studies in the History of Science and Technology), as well as the written and audio archive of the author who has been working at S. I. Vavilov Institute for the History of Science and Technology of the USSR (Russian) Academy of Sciences since 1971.