Industrial Party Research Articles

Absurd justice: documenting the show trial in Sergei Loznitsa’s The Trial (2018)

ABSTRACT This article interrogates the material history and conceptual origins of Sergei Loznitsa’s The Trial (2018), an archival documentary that re-edits restored footage and deleted scenes from Iakov Posel’skii’s 1931 propaganda documentary 13 Days, one of the Soviet Union’s earliest sound films. Shelved in state archives soon after its release, Posel’skii’s documentary chronicles the infamous Industrial Party Trial, in which a cabal of scientists and engineers were accused of undermining Soviet industry. To tell this story, The Trial relies on a lack of commentary supplemented by novel sound editing techniques including the addition of seemingly indexical sounds. This article investigates such devices as an attempt to immerse the viewer in a moment in time, thus creating a realistic experience of a historical event. In doing so, it provides insight into the cinematic techniques Loznitsa uses to repurpose archival materials, and touches on the role of the audience in Loznitsa’s film.

Investigation of EMG parameter for transtibial prosthetic user with flexion and extension of the knee and normal walking gait: A preliminary study.

Electromyography signal has been used widely as input for prosthetic's leg movements. C-Leg, for example, is among the prosthetics devices that use electromyography as the main input. The main challenge facing the industrial party is the position of the electromyography sensor as it is fixed inside the socket. The study aims to investigate the best positional parameter of electromyography for transtibial prosthetic users for the device to be effective in multiple movement activities and compare with normal human muscle's activities. DELSYS Trigno wireless electromyography instrument was used in this study to achieve this aim. Ten non-amputee subjects and two transtibial amputees were involved in this study. The surface electromyography signals were recorded from two anterior and posterior below the knee muscles and above the knee muscles, respectively: tibial anterior and gastrocnemius lateral head as well as rectus femoris and biceps femoris during two activities (flexion and extension of knee joint and gait cycle for normal walking). The result during flexion and extension activities for gastrocnemius lateral head and biceps femoris muscles was found to be more useful for the control subjects, while the tibial anterior and also gastrocnemius lateral head are more active for amputee subjects. Also, during normal walking activity for biceps femoris and gastrocnemius lateral head, it was more useful for the control subjects, while for transtibial amputee subject-1, the rectus femoris was the highest signal of the average normal walking activity (0.0001 V) compared to biceps femoris (0.00007 V), as for transtibial amputee subject-2, the biceps femoris was the highest signals of the average normal walking activity (0.0001 V) compared to rectus femoris (0.00004 V). So, it is difficult to rely entirely on the static positioning of the electromyography sensor within the socket as there is a possibility of the sensor to contact with inactive muscle, which will be a gap in the control, leading to a decrease in the functional efficiency of the powered prostheses.

Инсценирующая диктатура: судебный процесс «Промпартии» 1930 г.

<span>Поиск сталинским руководством в 1930 г. путей преодоления нараставших кризисных ситуаций внутри страны и за рубежом (рост социальной напряженности и протестных настроений в обществе по отношению к власти, межгосударственные торгово</span><span class="myHorizontalScaleForEmDashSpaceAfter">-</span><span>экономические конфликты и т.д.) делал неизбежным уже апробированное обращение к технологиям социальной мобилизации в борьбе против «внутренних и внешних врагов» с использованием юстиции. Суд над мифической «Промпартией» стал первым в СССР полностью постановочным политическим процессом. В ходе его проведения властью впервые столь масштабно применялись в своем сочетании современные пропагандистские средства (киносъемка, радиотрансляция из зала суда, подневное освещение слушаний в газетах практически идентичное стенограмме) для воздействия на общественное сознание не только населения СССР, но и левых и рабочих движений зарубежных стран. Процесс «Промпартии» обладал также своей оборотной стороной, скрывавшей цели и намерения его организаторов, реконструировать которые позволяют служебные документы и материалы партийно</span><span class="myHorizontalScaleForEmDashSpaceAfter">-</span><span>государственных и чекистских органов. В статье анализируется проблема возможностей и ограничений использования сталинским руководством данного судебного процесса в качестве средства управления поведением масс в раннесоветском обществе.</span>

Struktury poziome PZPR w warszawskim środowisku naukowym w latach 1980–1981

Artykuł dotyczy tzw. struktur poziomych w PZPR, będących nieformalnymi, pozastatutowymi formami współpracy między Podstawowymi Organizacjami Partyjnymi. Zjawisko było charakterystyczne dla kryzysu z lat 1980–1981 i stanowiło część liberalnego nurtu w partii. W tekście przybliżono działalność Partyjnej Komisji Koordynacyjnej Warszawskiego Środowiska Naukowego – zakres podejmowanych przez nią zagadnień związanych z „odnową” PZPR, relacje z aparatem warszawskim i centralnym oraz proces pacyfikacji środowiska po wprowadzeniu stanu wojennego. Communist horizontal structures in the Warsaw academic community in 1980–1981After the agreement concluded with the “Solidarity” in summer of 1980, it was obvious that the crisis would also have an impact on the relations between members of the Polish United Workers’ Party (PUWP). The Political Bureau of the Central Committee as well as the rest of the apparatus divided into two wings. Liberals wanted further cooperation with the Solidarity and democratisation of the Party’s structures. Conservatives (also called dogmatics) were eager to fight against the opposition and therefore maintain discipline in their own ranks in order to be more efficient in that struggle. Meanwhile, ordinary members massed in the Basic Party Organizations along with their leaders from the lower level of the apparatus started to articulate their disappointment and criticism of the PUWP policy and leadership. The phenomenon was most apparent at the universities and the most numerous industrial party cells. Basic organizations started to cooperate with each other, making the so-called “horizontal structures” (in opposition to vertical structures regulated in the Party’s statute). One of that structures was the Party Coordination Commission of the Warsaw Scientific Community. It was established in November 1980 and consisted of representatives of the universities and the Polish Academy of Sciences as well as representatives of workers invited to the Commission. The main issue discussed during the Commission meetings was general democratization, especially of the PUWP. The head of capital’s communist apparatus Stanisław Kociołek supported that movement but probably it was a tactical decision made to please own members in order to have a free hand to deal with the “Solidarity” regarded as the main threat to hegemony of the Party. This uncomfortable partnership lasted almost until the introduction of martial law in December 1981 which delegalized any informal (both dogmatic and horizontal) structures.

RATIONALE FOR CONTROLLED COOLING PARAMETERS HIGH CARBON ROLLED STEEL IN WIRE MILL STREAM 320/150 JSC «MSW»

Purpose. Justification and development of temperature and speed regulation during continuous cooling rolled steel of various diameters on Stelmor line. Methodology. In the production of rolled steel metal temperature control performed using stationary instrumentation and portable laser pyrometers. Metallographic examination was performed by means of optical light microscopes «OLYMPUS IX70» and «Axiovert 200 M MAT». The phase composition of the resulting scale on the rolling surface was determined by X-ray diffractometer DRON-3M. Results. A method for the controlled two-stage air-cooled rolled steel of high-carbon steels was designed, which allows for the formation of an effective metal microstructure with high quality performance. Scientific novelty. It is found that the air cooling rolled steel in the temperature range (95010)…(560…540) oС must be carried out at a rate V1 = (7,125,5)(F:P), then V2 = (1,56,0)(F:P), which promotes the formation of pearlite structure with a high degree of dispersion with a slight separation of structurally free ferrite ( 2…3 %) for the pro-eutectoid steel composition and the almost complete absence of structural-free cementite (traces cementite network) for hypereutectoid steels. Practical importance. Industrial metal release party was characterized by a decrease in the spread of mechanical properties along the length of the coil rolled steel grade C70D2: ∆в = 50…55 МПа, ∆ψ ≤ 4 %, ∆δ10 ≤ 2 %.

Feasibility of a soft biological improvement of natural soils used in compacted linear earth construction

Increasing demand for infrastructures requires innovative, cheap and environmental sustainable practices in construction. The soils which are available on site for linear embankments often need to be improved to satisfy the necessary performance and strength requirements. A bio-improvement is evaluated here, for use in compacted earth construction. To the aim of sustainability and cost reduction, a soft technique was chosen by the industrial party, which consisted in adding bacteria to a superficial soil retrieved in situ, and letting them precipitate calcium carbonate with the aid of the nutrients available in the organic matter of the soil and in the compaction water. The effects of the soft biological treatment on silty clayey sand were studied systematically in a comprehensive laboratory investigation, focused on the properties mostly affecting the performance of earth constructions: compaction energy, water retention, hydraulic conductivity, small-strain shear stiffness, collapse potential and shear strength. Mercury intrusion porosimetry tests and scanning electron microscopy were performed to help in providing a comprehensive picture of the consequences of the soft biological treatment on the natural soil. Lack in artificial nutrients reduces the efficiency of the biological treatment with respect to other cases reported in the literature. Nonetheless, organogenic aggregates and bonds are created during mixing and ageing, as detected from small-stiffness measurement during the curing time lapse. The bio-cemented bonds are mostly broken during compaction, while the aggregated structure remains, and the fine fraction generated by broken bonds ends in acting as filler of some inter-grain and inter-aggregate porosity. Eventually, the effects of the adopted technique on the hydro-mechanical behaviour of the compacted soil can be described in a coherent picture as the result of bio-filling of an aggregated compacted soil fabric.

La diffusion des procès de Moscou en France : un exemple de « glasnost' » stalinienne

In the thirties, the Soviet authorities released in Europe the transcripts of court proceedings taken in the course of four prominent trials : the trial of the Industrial Party in 1931, the trial of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Centre in 1936, the trial of the Anti-Soviet Trotskyite Centre in 1937 and the trial of the Anti-Soviet "Bloc of Right-wingers and Trotskyites" in 1938. Instruments of propaganda and counter-propaganda, these documents were intended by the leadership of the Central Committee of the CPSU to generate an image of their regime in Europe that would serve their interests. The recent declassification of some archival materials has facilitated the analysis of this image that the Soviet authorities designed for Western consumption on the eve of the Second World War.

The Ghost of the Executed Engineer: Technology and the Fall of the Soviet Union by Loren R. Graham

Book Reviews The Ghost ofthe Executed Engineer: Technology and the Fall ofthe Soviet Union. By Loren R. Graham. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993. Pp. xiv+128; illustrations, notes, index. $22.95. Technology has played a central role in the “Soviet experiment” from its earliest days through its recent demise, but few historians have been equipped or inclined to study its intricacies. The one bright exception was Kendall E. Bailes, whose classic study, Technology and Society under Lenin and Stalin (Princeton, N.J., 1978), remains the best book on the subject; but, following his untimely death, its rich insights and research agendas have been largely unexplored. Now Bailes’s teacher, historian of Soviet science Loren Graham, has made the subject the centerpiece of this, his latest—and perhaps best—book, a well-crafted parable (some 35,000 words in all) about the importance of a humane, human-scale technology. Beautifully produced and immensely readable, the volume weaves together three related tales: the quest of the author (a chemical engineer by training) for archival information on a Soviet engineer executed in 1928, the story of that engineer’s life and ideas, and the story of the ultimate failure and demise of the Soviet Union. The book’s hero is Peter Palchinsky (1857-1928), an eldest son who entered engineering full of enthusiasm and with an apparent knack for being in the right place at the wrong time. His Social Revolutionary politics led to numerous arrests by the tsarist secret police; on the other hand, his six-year exile in Europe (1908-13) led to a four-volume work on seaports and a successful life as a mining consultant. He went home to help the Russian military during the Great War and welcomed the February 1917 revolution, soon becoming one of the ministers of the new Provincial Government—only to find himself, come October, the official in charge of the unsuccessful defense of the Winter Palace. Thereafter he was repeatedly in and out of prison, as the various organs of Bolshevik power balanced his questionable political tastes (he liked Kropotkin) against his evident talents in getting the mines working. The mid-1920s found Palchinsky busy at his Institute of the Earth’s Surface and Depths (which he had founded in 1916), publishing its journal, actively advising the government—and keeping Gommunists out of his institute (they were unprofessional). He was also an active organizer of the engineering profession, and gave voice—perhaps a bit too often—to its technocratic inclinations. (In one letter, he called not for interna­ tional communism but international technology—not Komintern, but “Techintern.”) Permission to reprint a review printed in this section may be obtained only from the reviewer. 168 TECHNOLOGYAND CULTURE Book Reviews 169 Then in April 1928 came the knock on the door: Palchinsky was arrested and shot within the month. Only in 1930, during the infamous Industrial Party Trial, did his fate become known—he was accused of having headed a technocratic conspiracy of engineers aimed at over­ throwing the Soviet government. From a secret police report, which Graham managed to examine, the real reasons for his arrest seem to be these: he argued too actively with his political bosses over their grandiose technological schemes, and he published too many unflatter­ ing details about the actual conditions in Soviet mining and industry. At any rate, he never went to trial, and Graham speculates that it was because, unlike most other accused engineers, he refused to “confess” to having done anything wrong. Although he supported centralized socialist planning, he had believed in local engineering and regional planning, not dictates from Moscow bosses; for him, the most important factor in engineering planning was human beings and their needs, and he had argued for improved living conditions and technical training for workers. Alas, Palchinsky’s was the path not taken. Immediately following the engineer’s death, Stalin would launch the giant “propaganda” projects that would do the Soviet image so much good abroad and wreak such havoc at home. Graham takes us through the sad litany: the Great Dnieper Dam, an economically unwise project that displaced over 10,000 prosperous Mennonite farmers from their land and into forced...

Industrial Structure and Party Competition in the New Deal: A Reply to Webber

This paper is a response to Webber's (1991) critique of Thomas Ferguson's (1983, 1984, 1986) essays on the New Deal and his “investment theory” of political parties. It argues that Webber's evidence is invalid and that his statistical design is conceptually flawed. The sample is defective: it includes many people it should not and it excludes others who should have been reckoned in, notably many Texas oilmen. His procedure for ascertaining corporate partisanship is inadequate, since, among other problems, it excludes large payments made to the 1936 Democratic campaign by firms such as Standard Oil of New Jersey and General Electric. The campaign finance data he relies upon are also far less complete than he implies. An entirely new data analysis is presented, incorporating not only Webber's data, but much new material from archives. The results confirm Ferguson's central thesis about the 1936 election: contributions to the Democrats in 1936 do indeed come from firms that are more internationally-oriented and capital-intensive than those contributing to the Republicans.

To the industrial party workers, managers, and experts participating in the All-Union Seminar for the study of experience gained by the L'vov regional enterprises in applying comprehensive production-quality-control system

To the industrial party workers, managers, and experts participating in the All-Union Seminar for the study of experience gained by the L'vov regional enterprises in applying comprehensive production-quality-control system

Urgent Measures for the Further Development of Soviet Agriculture

Comrades! An important decision on the unification of the industrial and rural party organizations at the regional and territorial levels was adopted at the November Plenary Meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The decision of the Central Committee Plenary Meeting was unanimously endorsed by the party and the people.

Patterns of Growth in the British Labour Vote

THE BRITISH LABOUR PARTY is emphatically not a class party. It can be called primarily an industrial party but it is equally accurate to call it a national party in the sense that it has shown similar ups-and-downs of strength in all the economic areas of Britain. These are the salient conclusions of Mr. Newman's stud,y of the whole forty-five years of the British Labour Party. His conclusions are intended to be suggestive rather than definiLive. But there is ample hard fact in this article to chart, for the first time, a meaningful road map of Labour's route to dominance. William J. Newman is an instructor in history at Princeton University.