The Technical Intelligentsia 1917–27

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to try to give a historical depth to the later discussions of the technical intelligentsia during Soviet reconstruction, and to make some sense of the emphasis on the dynamic elements in the situation after 1927. It has not been possible to give the same amount of attention to the postrevolutionary decade as to the later years. But the present discussion is nonetheless intended to be more than a backdrop. It forms a necessary part of the whole argument. The first section looks at the role of the technical intelligentsia during the revolutionary period and the civil war, and examines some of the disputes within the party which arose in this connection. The second section identifies some of the key changes affecting the technical intelligentsia during the NEP, focusing on party policy towards the bourgeois specialists and their response to it, on the relations between Bolshevik enterprise directors and non-party specialists, and on the role of the managers in relation to the workers and trade unions.