File spoon-archives/marxism.archive/marxism_1995/95-04-30.000, message 189


Date: Mon, 10 Apr 1995 16:20:29 -0400 (EDT)
From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: Soviet Science


Louis Proyect:

For those interested in the subject of science in the former USSR, I want 
to strongly recommend the work of Loren Graham. His titles include:

Science in Russia and the Soviet Union, Cambridge, 1993

Science and the Soviet Social Order, Harvard, 1990

Science, Philosophy and Human Behavior in the Soviet Union, Columbia, 1987

Science and Philosophy in the Soviet Union, Vintage, 1974

Soviet Academy of Sciences and the Communist Party 1927-1932, Princeton, 1967

In addition, Graham wrote "The Ghost of the Executed Engineer" about the 
civil engineer Palchinksy who put forward an industrial development model 
that differed radically from Stalin's. I wrote something about this most 
fascinating book and posted it to this list a while back. I'll re-post it 
below for anybody who wants to get a feel for the types of issues Graham
is examining:

---------------------------------------------------------- 
Peter Palchinsky was a civil engineer who joined the 
Communist Party shortly after the 1917 revolution. In the 
1920's he developed an approach to industrialization that 
differed radically from Stalin's. 
 
Palchinsky was enthusiastic about planning. He believed that 
the Soviet Union opened up possibilities for the planning of 
industry that were impossible under Tsarism. He thought 
that engineers could play a major role in the growth of 
socialism. He hoped that engineers could be as important to 
the construction of socialism as financiers were to the 
development of capitalism. 
 
Palchinsky argued against the type of gigantic enterprises 
that were beginning to capture Stalin's rather limited 
imagination. He noted that middle-sized and small 
enterprises often have advantages over large ones. For one 
thing, workers at smaller factories are usually able to grasp 
the final goals more easily. 
 
He believed that the single most important factor in 
engineering decisions was human beings themselves. 
Successful industrialization and high productivity were not 
possible without highly trained workers and adequate 
provision for their social and economic needs. 
 
His differences with Stalin's pyramid-building approach 
erupted over the Great Dneiper Dam project, one of the 
most fabled 5-year plan projects. Palchinsky made the 
following critiques. The project didn't take into account the 
huge distances between the dam and the targeted sites. As a 
consequence, there would be huge transmission costs and 
declines in efficiency.  
 
Also, the project didn't take into account the damage 
resulting floods would cause to surrounding farms situated 
in lowlands. Some 10,000 villagers had to flee their homes. 
As the project fell behind schedule and overran costs, the 
workers' needs were more and more neglected. The workers 
suffered under freezing conditions, living in cramped tents 
and barracks without adequate sanitary facilities. TB, 
typhus, and smallpox spread throughout the worker's 
quarters. 
 
Palchinsky argued forcefully against projects such as these 
and offered a more rational, humane and less ideologically 
driven approach. In other words, he stressed sound 
engineering and planning methods. He helped to organize a 
study group dedicated to his principles. Palchinsky and 
other engineers who opposed Stalin's bureaucratic system 
allied themselves to some extent with Bukharin and Rykov 
who had often defended engineers and their approach to 
industrial planning. Stalin cracked down on the Bukharin 
opposition around the same time as he attacked dissident 
engineers and had Palchinsky arrested in 1928. Palchinsky died 
behind bars 2 years later. 
 
His criticisms of Stalinism anticipated many of the failures 
of Soviet industrialization. The Chernobyl disaster in 
particular could be attributable to the same type of 
bureaucratic myopia that afflicted the Dneiper dam project. 
 
Could the Soviet Union have evolved and progressed with 
an industrialization model more akin to Palchinsky's? I 
believe so. In any case, it is a mistake to draw an equation 
between Stalin's 5-year plans and the term "planned 
socialism". The loss of Palchinsky and the political 
opposition he identified with constitute one of the great 
"what if's" in history. We have no way of knowing what the 
Soviet Union would have looked like without their 
suppression. In the meantime, I strongly urge members of 
this list to take a second look at Soviet history and to 
consider what impact an approach similar to Palchinsky's 
would have made. For the whole story on Palchinksy, I 
recommend Loren Graham's "The Ghost of the Executed 
Engineer: Technology and the Fall of the Soviet Union", 
Harvard Press, 1993. 
-------------------------------------------------------

On Mon, 10 Apr 1995, Ron Press wrote:

> Hi I Agree with Ralph about discussions in Soviet Science. I have
> a book published in 1968 , Progress Publishers, Moscow,
> 
>  Philosophical Problems of Elementary-Particle Physics.
> 
> A remarkable book which is exceptionally free from any imposed
> ideological straightjacket.
> 
> >>>>>>>>> From: Ralph Dumain <rdumain-AT-igc.apc.org> Subject:
> MARXISM & MATH REFERENCES 2
> 			 <<<<<<<<<<<<
> 
> Ron Press
> 
> I was taught that freedom is the recognition of necessity. This
> solves no problems but then do all problems have solutions? Or is
> it the lack of solutions that keeps the wheels turning?
> 
> 
>      --- from list marxism-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
> 
> 
> 


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