Summary

Abstract

When the Civil War ended in 1921 there seemed to be only one urgent locomotive problem in the Soviet Union, the need to restore the locomotive stock to its 1913 level. Designers and researchers could therefore afford an unhurried approach; new passenger locomotives were developed, and the methodical testing of locomotives continued on pre-war lines. During these years a number of younger men, typically engineers who had graduated in the previous decade, took over responsible jobs from those who had died, emigrated, retired, or been dismissed. It was to this new generation that men like Egorchenko and Syromyatnikov belonged; men who, while they seemed to thrive in the new revolutionary society, never abandoned that fundamental characteristic of the pre-war traction specialists, the preference for the theoretical approach and the quest for something better than excellence.