The Evolution of the Memory of Alexei Gastev as the Founder of the National School of Management – Scientific Organization of Labor in Modern Practices of Commemoration

Abstract

The Scientific Organization of Labor (NOT) became the largest school of management in the young Soviet republic, and Alexei Gastev's work as head of the Central Institute of Labor was duly appreciated by both contemporaries and followers. In this connection, during the subsequent period, the ideas of the authors of the NOT were used in management practice to solve urgent problems. In the post-Soviet period, researchers of the national history of management thought considered the developments of the ideologist of the NOT Alexei Gastev as a paradigmatic stage in the development of managerial ideas in our country. This article analyzes not the ideas of the author of the NOT themselves, but the memory of his ideas and how this memory was reflected in the process of their interpretation and application. The research is based on the methodology of Memory studies by such authors as Maurice Halbwachs, Jan and Aleida Assmann, Pierre Nora, as well as on the approaches of representatives of the Cambridge School of Intellectual History Quentin Skinner and John Pocock and the research apparatus of the concept of deterritorialization by Gilles Deleuze. In addition, the author's approach is used in the form of synthesis of the results of a meaningful and contextual analysis of memory practices. The result of the study is a description and justification of changes in the general context of A. K. Gastev's memory practices. Due to the lack of collective and cultural memory of A. K. Gastev in Soviet times, in the early years of the post-Soviet period, the practice of commemoration focuses on the building of memory through the actualization of research on the scientific organization of labor. Further, the context of actualization loses its significance and the process of attaching the memory of A. K. Gastev to nearby cultural objects, such as the culture of the avant-garde era, takes place. At the moment, the transformation of the memory of A. K. Gastev is clearly expressed in the formation of the cultural memory of "Gastevski". This new form of memory does not yet have precise boundaries, but some contours are already emerging.