Historians recognize the crucial role of engineers in industrialization. Mass industrialization has historically been accompanied by an increase in the number of engineers. Advancement in technology and management is impossible without their contributions. Yet, at the height of Soviet industrialization in the 1930s, countless engineers were persecuted for counter-revolutionary crimes. A prominent engineer, Peter Palchinsky, was executed for “restoration of capitalism” in 1929, and dozens of engineers were charged with crimes of espionage and sabotage during the industrial party trials of the 1930s. Given their indispensable role in industrialization, why were Soviet engineers persecuted at a time when they were most needed? We address this paradox by looking at Alexander Bogdanov’s The Engineer Menni in order to trace the ideological continuities and conflicts between a global technocratic movement during the interwar years and Soviet Marxism. Contrary to authors who claim that Marxist ideology made the conflict between technocratic expertise and the soviet state inevitable, the paper argues for a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between technocracy and Marxism.
Keywords: Alexander Bogdanov, Five year plans, Stalinism, Industrial Policies, Soviet Literature, Marxism
I. INTRODUCTION
“His is the ambition of the gods,” commented the minister on Menni in Bogdanov’s The Engineer Menni [1]. This representation of engineers is of particular importance considering the history of the Soviet communism; the Marxist ideology presents equal, if not more ambitious, goals of revolutions and social change compared to that of the engineers. As a result, it posits great interest over the relationship between the two “gods” of any society.
Engineers play an indispensable role in the process of industrialization by participating directly in production, technological development, project implementation, and managerial advancements. Thus, industrialization has historically been accompanied by an expansion in the size of engineers and an elevation in their social status.
The Soviet Union accomplished unprecedented industrialization in the 1930s. During the first five year plan, the Soviet industrial output increased by 118% with heavy industries experiencing the greatest expansions [2]. Industrialization was organized around central planning, through organizations like GOSPLAN or the GOELRO committee. This shift towards a planned economy marked the end of the New Economy Policy period and the establishment of Stalinism. Regardless of the engineering community’s opinion of central planning, Soviet engineers made considerable contributions to this process of industrialization. The Dnieper dam designed by the engineer Ivan Alexandrov, for example, was the iconic project of the GOELRO plan [3]. Another engineer, Peter Palchinsky, conducted resource explorations and introduced scientific management to the Soviet industries. Engineers also made important contributions to the war effort, such as researching radar technology [4].
The Soviet Union’s treatment of engineers during this period, however, was ambivalent and self-contradictory. Despite their contributions, engineers of the late 1920s and early 1930s were considered politically suspect and faced persecution. In a famous case in 1929, the engineer Peter Palchinsky was arrested and executed for allegations of an “anti-soviet conspiracy.” In the later case of the industrial party trial, dozens of engineers, including some prominent figures in their fields, were sentenced to jail; a few of them were even executed [5].
FIG. 1. Achievements of the first five year plan and other consecutive plans.
Whereas persecution was widespread, some Soviet engineers were lauded with high honor and came to occupy important positions of power. In fact, a large portion of the recipients of the two major Soviet State Prizes, the Stalin Prize and the Lenin Prize, were engineers. Some even attained high status unthinkable during the Tsarist era. The disparity between the treatment of the engineers, their contributions in Soviet industrialization, and their elevated social position, poses the question: how did soviet ideology and technocratic tendencies conceive of the engineer? In what ways did these intellectual movements overlap and diverge? Answers to these questions help to reveal the myriad of roles engineers have played in societies around the world. This research also provides insights into the fate of engineers in Maoist China and in the revolutionary context of other post-colonial states.
Historians have made previous forays into these questions. Kendall Bailes’s “The Politics of Technology: Stalin and Technocratic Thinking among Soviet Engineers” situates the conflict between engineers and the Soviet state within the broader context of a global technocratic movement [6]. The iconic All Russian Association of Engineers (VAI), which consisted of more than ten thousand members, represented this trend. Most of the Russian engineers and organizations like the VAI tried to maintain aloofness of party politics for most of the 1920s. Much of this aloofness is explicable in the context of technocracy, as the engineers believed that those who designed and built projects should be the ones in charge of deciding what gets built and how, rather than political officials. This technocratic ideology continued into the late 1920s: less than 1% of the professional engineers were members of the communist party even in 1928 because involvement in politics was unnecessary under technocracy. Stalinists criticized engineers’ reluctance to join the party. Bailes suggests that Marxist ideology was the root cause of the conflict between the communist party and the engineers. While engineers longed for greater political roles in society, the Soviet ideology subordinated them to the state and considered them incapable of exerting an independent influence. Consequently, as the technocratic trend developed and the engineers sought greater political authority, they came into an unavoidable conflict with the Soviet state.
Harley Balzer, on the other hand, looked to more practical issues to account for this conflict. In his “Engineers: The Rise and Decline of a Social Myth” [7]. He attributes this conflict to a distrust of the old intelligentsia and the overreactions to many minor conflicts that were more or less inevitable under the 1930s Soviet social and political atmosphere. Balzer notes that Stalin was suspicious of engineers in the early 1930s, most of whom received their education during the Tsarist era, and considered them unreliable. Particularly, Stalin initiated the Cultural Revolution Movement in the late 1920s, which was aimed at attacking and diminishing the authorities of the old intelligentsia.
In addition, in a 1934 interview with H.G. Wells, Stalin emphasized that “It must not be thought that the technical intelligentsia can play an independent historical role” [8], discrediting the role of engineers in society. This assertion is further supported by one of Balzer’s later observations that during and after WWII, Soviet engineers were better incorporated into the Soviet state and received positive representation in literature and art. Many of these changes can be explained through a generational change in the engineering community. Distrust was automatically resolved as more trustworthy, and post-revolutionary engineers rose to important positions in society.
Balzer also characterized the conflict between the state and the engineers along another line of events. As the atmosphere of fierce policy dispute and struggle for power continued into the 1930s, many other of conflicts, such as the conflict between the trained experts and the praktiki (technicians who received on-the-job training rather than formal education) inherited from the Tsarist era or the conflict between the engineers and party officials regarding some of the unrealistic goals during industrialization could be interpreted as acts of sabotage or espionage, resulting in series of arrests and executions.
This paper addresses the disparity from an ideological perspective through a combination of a historical and literary analysis of the work of the Russian Soviet theorist Alexander Bogdanov. Specifically, the paper discusses the image of engineers portrayed in Bogdanov’s 1912 novel Engineer Menni, a novel describing the struggle over a massive infrastructure project in a hypothetical Martian society and evaluates the ideal role and compatibility of the engineer community in a Marxist society; the novel holds great research value despite its relatively early publication date to the paper’s research of the 1930s U.S.S.R., as its influence continued for decades and Bogdanov, applying many of the thoughts he expressed in the novel, participated in the industrial planning and social movements later in the Soviet Union. This paper contributes to the existing analysis regarding both the role and the treatment of engineers in the Soviet society; particularly, it broadens the understanding of a supposedly ideological conflict introduced by Bailes and deepens it with specific textual evidence. By looking at how one particularly influential author sought to configure engineering expertise, it helps us blur the boundaries between Marxism and technocratic ideologies of the early twentieth century and offers us an alternative understanding of the role of technology and society.
II. PRACTICAL AND IDEOLOGICAL FACTORS: WHY BOGDANOV’S WORK IS IMPORTANT
Historians have long debated the compatibility of the engineers to the Marxist system along two lines of logic: practical political concerns as exemplified by Balzersecond and specific ideological conflicts as argued by Bailes. Practical and political factors undeniably contributed to the tension between the Soviet government and the engineering community, but they can not be the only factors. Though treating the remains of the old intelligentsia with suspicion, Soviet leaders did not completely discredit the value of these engineers. Lenin, despite criticizing the idea of Taylorism and scientific management as a tool for capitalistic alienation, remained that these inventions do represent certain scientific principles and should be studied by the Soviets [9]. Stalin himself derided a group of Marxist who believed that all the creations of capitalism should be abolished as “troglodytes” [10].
Other pieces of circumstantial evidence indicate that Marxism and technocratic thought were not incompatible. Peter Palchinsky, who organized the Provisional Government’s defense of the Winter Palace in 1917 against the Bolsheviks, undertook important government positions such as the chairman of the Russian Technical Society before his execution in 1929. Leonid Ramzin, one of the convicts of the Industrial Party Trial, was amnestied two years after the trial and later awarded with various honors including the Stalin Prize and the Lenin Prize. If practical and political factors were indeed the overarching concern of the Soviet state, it is unlikely that these engineers would have the chance to be either assigned with important positions or rehabilitated and awarded with high honor. Consequently, we must consider the complex ideological landscape of the late 1920s and early 1930s in order to understand the relationship between engineers and the soviet state.
Bailes argued that the engineering technocracy is in inevitable conflict with the Marxist ideology. Yet this argument is not entirely accurate regarding the position of engineers in a communist society. Bailes emphasized the political aspect of this ideology as he defined technocracy (or “technocratic trend” as used in the article) as the engineers’ pursuit of greater social and political responsibility. In this sense, his assertions reflect reality. Marx did not leave any space politically for an intermediate class, such as engineers, in his theory of class struggle.
Other Soviet leaders exhibited a similar tendency. In a 1920 speech, Lenin rejected the political possibility for an intermediate class [11]. Stalin insisted that only the working class should undertake the majority of social and political roles. Nevertheless, this definition overlooks another element crucial to the idea of technocracy: the rule of expertise. Industrial expertise is essential to any planned economy as advocated by Marx because communist governments require tens of thousands of trained personnel to allocate resources for production and determine the adequate amount to produce.
Even in advanced communist societies, as envisioned by Marx, expertise would still be indispensable to social progress. The historian Michael G. Smith characterized the role of technical expertise in a communist society as elevating humanity as a whole to a higher technical and intellectual stage in “Marx, Technocracy, and the Corporatist Ethos” [12]. In this stage, technological and managerial expertise serve as organic compounds of society, without any implications of status or identity. Thus, the fundamental ideology conflict proposed by Bailes captures only part of the situation; whereas Marxism does reject the functioning of engineers as an intermediate social class, it recognizes the significance of their skill and training and considers them a vital component of society. This aspect of Marx’s thought helps us partially reconcile the soviet state’s conflicting policies toward the old intelligentsia. It problematizes the idea that political factors were a cause of conflict between the engineers and the state, as the two ideologies are more similar than previously thought.
Despite the salutary incorporation of technical expertise in communist society, it must be acknowledged that this relation between the state and the engineer is evaluated in a highly developed communist society yet to exist, in which Marx predicts the equalization of physical and intellectual labor. Consequently, a question naturally arose: what would be the relationship between the state and the engineers in a socialist society, a preliminary form of the ideal Marxist society. where various sources of conflict such as those proposed by Balzer and Bailes persist? This question can be adequately addressed through a literary analysis of the work The Engineer Menni by Alexander Bogdanov, an influential Russian Soviet Marxist theorist and philosopher.
III. GOOD ENGINEER, BAD ENGINEER, AND THE IDEAL SOVIET ENGINEER
Depicting a fictional Martian society and the construction of a grandiose canal that would permanently alter the climate of a region, Bogdanov establishes a multitude of images of the engineers, of which one can readily organize into three categories: bad engineers, good engineers and the ideal Soviet engineer. The categorization of these three types of engineers provides a clear understanding of the relationship between the engineering community and Marxism and may aid in the explanation of the persecution of the engineers of the 1930s.
The first category, the bad engineers, refers to the collaborators of financial oligarchy and cartels. The novel features Maro, who cooperated with oligarchs to seize control of the construction, and three anonymous engineers who deliberately altered the technical details of the project for the benefit of a dynamite cartel. This category of engineers reflects the practical and political causes of conflicts as proposed by Balzer and resonates with the image of engineers in various Soviet science fictions of 1920s, such as The Garin Death Ray by Alexey Tolstoy and The Ruler of the World by Alexander Belyaev. These negative portrayals could be understood as a more general distrust towards the intelligentsia of the old regime that we might expect of any revolutionary regime. In particular, as Marxist ideology emphasizes the theory of class struggle, this distrust may be magnified as it conflates with the greater revolutionary conflict, considering the fact that usually only upper class families can afford professional engineering training in Tsarist Russia.
The second category, the good engineers, forms a sharp contrast with the first. Represented by Menni, the good engineers exhibit a strong technocratic tendency accompanied with technical expertise, which posits them in frequent conflict with the common enemy of the proletariat, monopolized capitalism, and financial cartels. Menni demanded a Cincinnati-like dictatorship – demanding immense power solely for the resolution of one issue – over the construction of the canal when he was appointed as the chief engineer. He denied the share of power in exchange for personal benefits as proposed by the cartels; he notably killed his assistant, Maro, after the assistant’s collaboration with the oligarchs was revealed. Despite this moral incorruptibility and the sharing of a common enemy, Bogdanov depicted a nuanced relationship between the working class and the good engineers represented by Menni. Whereas Menni did advocate for wage increases and abbreviated working hours, these propositions were not orientated for the bettering of the proletariat, but rather for the believe that incentivized workers are more productive, indicating a clear ideological gap between technocracy and the proletariat ideology.
On the other hand, though the workers in the novel esteemed Menni’s professionality and leadership, it must also be admitted that various factors specific to the novel, and the Martian society had largely bridged this ideological gap between the workers and Menni. For instance, Bogdanov characterized the Martian labor movements as mild and placid, due to the fact that the Martian workers received on average better payment compared to their counterparts on Earth, and that the conversion of peasants to workers under capitalism was a gradual process achieved in just one hundred years. More importantly, Menni’s kinship with his son Metti, an important labor leader discussed below, significantly reconciled the engineer with the workers. Consequently, it can be inferred that in an environment where the ideological conflicts proposed by Bailes were not otherwise alleviated, Menni’s fate may not be that different from those of Palchinsky or the convicted engineers of the 1930s in the Soviet Union. In fact, even with regard to the workers’ successful incorporation of Menni, a labor leader, Arri, still advocated for Menni’s retirement from executive positions because he believed that the engineer is ultimately alien to the working class.
The image of the good engineer in The Engineer Menni effectively captured the complex relationship between engineering technocracy and the Marxist ideology: despite the shared enemy in their course of struggle, the engineer is no more than a temporary ally derived from instrumental rather than ideological concerns to the proletariat. This particular positioning renders the relationship between engineers and the working class highly unstable, and a conflict could erupt with even the slightest disruption or a transient failure of any conciliatory factors. Many of the persecutions of the engineers in the 1930s can be explained through this structural instability.
The third category of engineers, the ideal Soviet engineer, is demonstrated through Menni’s son Netti. This type of engineer is best categorized through a comparison with the second. Though raised separately from his father, Netti inherited many of Menni’s intellectual talents and character traits: analytical, dedicated, and uncompromising. Yet the two characters differ significantly in their ideology. Whereas Menni was disconnected to the workers and had denounced them for a lack of knowledge on multiple occasions, Netti was a steadfast ally of the proletariat. More importantly, Netti is highly ideological, in contrast to Menni’s political aloofness. In fact, Menni expressed in the midst of several conversations that he could not comprehend Netti’s views as they are excessively philosophical.
In particular, Netti demonstrated many of the iconic Marxist views. He believed that the formation of labor unions represents a wakening of class consciousness and emphasized the homogeneity of physical and intellectual labor, while Menni questioned the legitimacy of these unions and insisted the later two are fundamentally different. In addition, the second and the third category of engineers differ in their education. Unlike Menni who received systematic training, Netti’s engineering knowledge is acquired from self-study, in a fashion similar to that of the praktiki in the Russian society. This method of acquisition is common among various Soviet Socialist Realism literature, such as the Cement, where organized workers rather than the engineers collaborate and resolve problems in production. In short, the image of ideal Soviet engineers presented by Bogdanov can be summarized as a fusion of the roles of workers and engineer: a character that shares the expertise of an engineer and the political identity of the workers.
The three categories of engineers established from Bogdanov’s The Engineer Menni provide an unique insight into the relations between the engineers and the Soviet government, effectively combining the analysis based on political factors and ideology various scholars had produced. Applying the ternary categorization of engineers established upon Bogdanov’s work to the 1930s Soviet Society, the majority of Soviet engineers fall into the second category. One may logically infer that most of the uncooperative “bad engineers” emigrated from the country in the prolonged Russian Civil War. On the other hand, considering the political aloofness of the engineers Bailes indicated, the “ideal Soviet engineers” existed minimally. Thus, the remaining engineers more or less demonstrated a technocratic tendency, which prompted at least their partial acceptance of the Soviet government. This composition of the engineers posits the challenge of the unstable relation between technocratic engineers as analyzed in the discussion of Menni.
This instability became particularly vulnerable under the social conditions of the 1930s Soviet Union. For instance, various factors including the fear of sabotage from the bad engineers and the fear of foreign espionage – the Soviet Union being the only communist country at the time – could have had a major impact on the already fragile cooperation between the engineers and the state. Other factors such as the conflict between the praktiki and trained experts proposed by Balzer and the conflict over the political aspect of technocracy Bailes observed may have had similar effects. The relative strength of this relationship varied from specific points of time. Locations within the Soviet Union then determined, to a degree, the fate of the engineers: when this relationship was free of disruptions, the engineers were lauded and received high honors for their contributions. In contrast, arrests and executions were inevitable once other factors interfered, damaging this fragile alliance.
The categorization of engineers from The Engineer Menni also provides an account for the relationship between Marxism and technocracy. In particular, the contrast of Menni and Netti calls for a dualistic evaluation of technocracy on the directions of politics and expertise. The Marxist ideology values its expertise aspect for the need of organizing production under planned economy and of developing productivity. Yet politically, technocracy conflicts fundamentally with Marxism. Technocracy ultimately sought to expand the power of the engineer group, which is evident through Menni’s demand for dictatorial authority over the project and his purposeful advocation for increased wages. Though both this expansion of power and the proletariat’s liberation under Marxism would face the common enemy of capitalism, their cooperation was transient and rootless and may significantly influence the fate of engineers as discussed.
IV. CONCLUSIONS
The paper’s analysis of Bogdanov’s The Engineer Menni provides a valuable explanation for the ambivalence associated with the Soviet Union’s treatment of engineers in the 1930s through the positioning and the structural instability of technocratic engineers in the Soviet society. It also demonstrates the dialectic interaction between the political and expertise aspects of technocracy regarding its relationship with the Marxist ideology. These analyses on technocracy highlight the importance of studying and recognizing the political and ideological pursuits of the engineering community. Despite consisting of only a small proportion of the entire population, this community had profound influences on the country’s prosperity and development, as evident through the discussions and evaluations of the process of Soviet industrialization.
[1] Alexander Bogdanov, The Engineer Menni (Indiana University Press, 1984), 374.
[2] Maurice Dobb, ”Rates of growth under the five‐year plans,” Soviet Studies (1953), 364-385.
[3] P. S. Neporozhnii, “50th anniversary of the Lenin Goélro Plan and Hydropower Development,” Hydrotechnical Construction 4, no.12: 1089–1093.
[4] “Bonch-Bruevich M.A., (1888-1940), radio technician,” Saint Petersburg Encyclopedia, http://www.encspb.ru/object/2804012728;jsessionid=6FF7AD2610D73DB86931D042D8192BFB?lc=en.
[5] Loren R. Graham, The Ghost of the Executed Engineer Technology and the Fall of the Soviet Union (Harvard University Press, 1996).
[6] Kendall E. Bailes, "The Politics of Technology: Stalin and Technocratic Thinking among Soviet Engineers," The American Historical Review 79, no. 2 (1974): 445-69.
[7] Harley Balzer, “Engineers: The Rise and Decline of a Social Myth,” Science and the Soviet Social Order (Harvard University Press, 1990), 141-168.
[8] Iossif Stalin, “MARXISM VERSUS LIBERALISM AN INTERVIEW WITH H.G. WELLS,” Lenin’s Collected Works (1978).
[9] Vladimir Lenin, The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1918).
[10] Iossif Stalin, “Marxism and Problems of Linguistics,” Pravda (Summer 1950).
[11] Vladimir Lenin, “Speech Delivered At An All-Russia Conference of Political Education Workers of Gubernia and Uyezd Education Departments,” Lenin’s Collected Works (1978): 340-361.
[12] Michael G. Smith, "Marx, Technocracy, and the Corporatist Ethos," Studies in Soviet Thought 36, no. 4 (1988): 233-50.