The Ghost of the Executed Engineer: Technology and the Fall of the Soviet Union (RUSSIAN RESEARCH CENTER STUDIES) - Hardcover

Graham, Loren

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674354362 ISBN 13: 9780674354364

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1993

Synopsis

Stalin ordered his execution, but here Peter Palchinsky has the last word. As if rising from an uneasy grave, Palchinsky's ghost leads us through the miasma of Soviet technology and industry, pointing out the mistakes he condemned in his time, the corruption and collapse he predicted, the ultimate price paid for silencing those who were not afraid to speak out. The story of this visionary engineer's life and work, as Loren Graham relates it, is also the story of the Soviet Union's industrial promise and failure.
We meet Palchinsky in pre-Revolutionary Russia, immersed in protests against the miserable lot of laborers in the tsarist state, protests destined to echo ironically during the Soviet worker's paradise. Exiled from the country, pardoned and welcomed back at the outbreak of World War I, the engineer joined the ranks of the Revolutionary government, only to find it no more open to criticism than the previous regime. His turbulent career offers us a window on debates over industrialization. Graham highlights the harsh irrationalities built into the Soviet system - the world's most inefficient steel mill in Magnito-gorsk, the gigantic and ill-conceived hydro-electric plant on the Dnieper River, the infamously cruel and mislocated construction of the White Sea Canal. Time and again, we see the effect of policies that ignore not only workers' and consumers' needs but also sound management and engineering precepts. And we see Palchinsky's criticism and advice, persistently given, consistently ignored, continue to haunt the Soviet Union right up to its dissolution in 1991.
The story of a man whose gifts and character set him in the path of history, The Ghost of the Executed Engineer is also a cautionary tale about the fate of engineering that disregards social and human issues.

About this title

About the Author

Loren Graham is Professor Emeritus of the History of Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Reviews

After Soviet engineer Peter A. Palchinsky (1875-1929) was arrested in 1928, his voluminous files of correspondence and professional papers were carted away by the secret police to languish unknown in a Moscow archive until 1991 when Graham, a well-known historian of Russian science and technology, rediscovered them. Two chapters of this work cover Palchinsky's life and professional accomplishments; three show how Soviet engineering is the poorer for not adopting his ideas of "humanitarian engineering." A graduate of the St. Petersburg Institute of Mining, Palchinsky was always interested in the political and economic facets of any construction project (such as housing and living conditions of the crew members). His ideas led to trouble with both the tsarist and Soviet governments. Some of the spectacular failures of Soviet construction (including Chernobyl and the steel complex at Magnitogorsk) Graham blames on Stalin's propensity for building the biggest, regardless of the human aspects. This short, specialized monograph belongs in both engineering and area studies collections.
- Marcia L. Sprules, Council on Foreign Relations Lib., New York
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674354362
• ISBN 13: 9780674354364
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 154