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The Electrification of Russia, 1880–1926 by Jonathan Coopersmith Pdf
The Electrification of Russia, 1880–1926 is the first full account of the widespread adoption of electricity in Russia, from the beginning in the 1880s to its early years as a state technology under Soviet rule. Jonathan Coopersmith has mined the archives for both the tsarist and the Soviet periods to examine a crucial element in the modernization of Russia. Coopersmith shows how the Communist Party forged an alliance with engineers to harness the socially transformative power of this science-based enterprise. A centralized plan of electrification triumphed, to the benefit of the Communist Party and the detriment of local governments and the electrical engineers. Coopersmith’s narrative of how this came to be elucidates the deep-seated and chronic conflict between the utopianism of Soviet ideology and the reality of Soviet politics and economics.
Industry, State, and Society in Stalin's Russia, 1926–1934 by David R. Shearer Pdf
In his reexamination of the origins of the Stalinist state during the formative period of rapid industrialization in the late 1920s and early 1930s, David R. Shearer argues that a centralized state-controlled economic system was the consciously conceived political creation of Stalinist leaders rather than the inevitable by-product of socialist industrialization. Focusing on the different economic and bureaucratic cultures within the industrial system, Shearer reconstructs the debates in 1928 and 1929 over administrative, financial, and commercial reform. He uses information from recently opened archives to show that attempts by the state's trading organizations to create a commercial economy enjoyed wide support, offering a model that combined planning and rapid industrialization with social democracy and economic prosperity. In an effort to crush the syndicate movement and establish tight political control over the economy, Stalinist leaders intervened with a program of radical reforms. Shearer demonstrates that professional engineers, planners and industrial administrators in many cases actively supported the creation of a powerful industrial state unhampered by domestic social and economic constraints. The paradoxical result, Shearer shows, was a loss of control. The overly centralized system that emerged during the first Five-Year Plan was rendered incoherent by periodic economic crises and the continuing influence of partially suppressed social and market forces.
Let There Be Light: Engineering, Entrepreneurship and Electricity in Colonial Bengal, 1880–1945 by Suvobrata Sarkar Pdf
This book studies the correlation between technological knowledge and industrial performance, with the focus on electricity, an emerging technology during 1880 and 1945.
Author : Markku Kangaspuro,Jeremy Smith Publisher : Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura Page : 332 pages File Size : 50,7 Mb Release : 2006-12-27 Category : History ISBN : 9789518580211
Modernisation in Russia since 1900 by Markku Kangaspuro,Jeremy Smith Pdf
Modernisation has been a constant theme in Russian history at least since Peter the Great launched a series of initiatives aimed at closing the economic, technical and cultural gap between Russia and the more ‘advanced’ countries of Europe. All of the leaders of the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia have been intensely aware of this gap, and have pursued a number of strategies, some more successful than others, in order to modernise the country. But it would be wrong to view modernisation as a unilinear process which was the exclusive preserve of the state. Modernisation has had profound effects on Russian society, and the attitudes of different social groups have been crucial to the success and failure of modernisation. This volume examines the broad theme of modernisation in late imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet Russia both through general overviews of particular topics, and specific case studies of modernisation projects and their impact. Modernisation is seen not just as an economic policy, but as a cultural and social phenomenon reflected through such diverse themes as ideology, welfare, education, gender relations, transport, political reform, and the Internet. The result is the most up to date and comprehensive survey of modernisation in Russia available, which highlights both one of the perennial problems and the challenges and prospects for contemporary Russia.
With Friends or Foes? Norman Saul continues his monumental multivolume magnum opus on U.S.-Russian relations over the course of 200 years. This fourth volume provides the first comprehensive study in any language of an era that shaped the rest of the century and captures the major changes in relations between two nations on the verge of becoming dominant global powers. Among other things, Saul examines the rationale for America's failure to recognize the Soviet government through the early 1930s, analyzing the impact of the Red Scare and the roles of the State Department, Russian migrs, religious groups, and key individuals—like Charles Evans Hughes, Robert Kelley, Herbert Hoover, Boris Skvirsky, Olga Kameneva, and Maxim Litvinov—on the policy process. In addition, he recalls the American Relief Administration's gigantic effort to help Russian peasants and garners new material from American business records on concession arrangements and commerce and on Soviet responses during the first Five Year Plan. He also records travelers' impressions, cultural exchange, and the role of academia in each country—particularly the contribution of Russian émigré scholars to American education and the contributions of American journalists in Russia. Saul also reveals the tendency on both sides to preserve an atmosphere of secrecy, conducting business behind closed doors and rarely on paper. His prodigious research in the Hoover Presidential Library, the Franklin Roosevelt Library, and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University-incorporating overlooked Diplomat Post Records and featuring an interview with George Kennan on his diplomatic role—has yielded a wealth of new insights into what really happened during a period in the history of the relations between the two countries that remains mysterious and controversial. Breaking new ground in diplomatic, economic, social, and cultural history, Saul's book illuminates both the mutual fascination that briefly permitted peaceful coexistence (and eventual alliance) and the ideological battles that ultimately led to the Cold War.
The Low-Carbon Contradiction by Gustav Cederlof Pdf
In the pursuit of socialism, Cuba became Latin America’s most oil-dependent economy. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the country lost 86 percent of its crude oil supplies, resulting in a severe energy crisis. In the face of this shock, Cuba started to develop a low-carbon economy based on economic and social reform rather than high-tech innovation. The Low-Carbon Contradiction examines this period of rapid low-carbon energy transition, which many have described as a “Cuban miracle” or even a real-life case of successful “degrowth.” Working with original research from inside households, workplaces, universities, and government offices, Gustav Cederlöf retells the history of the Cuban Revolution as one of profound environmental and infrastructural change. In doing so, he opens up new questions about energy transitions, their politics, and the conditions of a socially just low-carbon future. The Cuban experience shows how a society can transform itself while rapidly cutting carbon emissions in the search for sustainability.
Author : James C. Scott Publisher : Yale University Press Page : 462 pages File Size : 41,8 Mb Release : 2020-03-17 Category : Political Science ISBN : 9780300246759
"One of the most profound and illuminating studies of this century to have been published in recent decades."--John Gray, New York Times Book Review Hailed as "a magisterial critique of top-down social planning" by the New York Times, this essential work analyzes disasters from Russia to Tanzania to uncover why states so often fail--sometimes catastrophically--in grand efforts to engineer their society or their environment, and uncovers the conditions common to all such planning disasters. "Beautifully written, this book calls into sharp relief the nature of the world we now inhabit."--New Yorker "A tour de force."-- Charles Tilly, Columbia University
Engineer of Revolutionary Russia by Anthony Heywood Pdf
This book is the first substantial study in any language of one of revolutionary Russia's most distinguished and controversial engineers - Iurii Vladimirovich Lomonosov (1876-1952). Not only does it provide an outline of his remarkable life and career, it also explores the relationship between science, technology and transport that developed in late tsarist and early Soviet Russia. Lomonosov's importance extends well beyond his scientific and engineering achievements thanks to the rich variety and public prominence of his professional and political activities. His generation - Lenin's generation - was inevitably at the forefront of Russian life from the 1910s to the 1930s, and Lomonosov took his place there as one of the country's best known and ultimately notorious engineers. As well as an innovative engineer who campaigned to enhance the role of science, he played a major role in shaping and administering the Russian railways, and undertook several diplomatic and scientific missions to the West during the early years of the Revolution. Falling from political favour during an assignment in Germany (1923-1927), he achieved notoriety in Russia as a 'non-returner' by apparently declining to return home. Thereby escaping probable arrest and execution, he began a new life abroad (1927-1952) which included a research post at the California Institute of Technology in 1929-1930, collaborative projects with the famous physicist P.L. Kapitsa in Cambridge, a long-time association with the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in London, and work for the British War Office during the Second World War. From Marxist revolutionary to American academic, this study reveals Lomonosov's extraordinary life. Drawing on a wide variety of official Russian sources, as well as Lomonosov's own diaries and memoirs, a vivid portrait of his life is presented, offering a better understanding of how science, technology and politics interacted in early-twentieth-century Russia.
The untold story of the power industry's efforts to electrify growing numbers of farms in the years before the creation of Depression-era government programs. Even after decades of retelling, the story of rural electrification in the United States remains dramatic and affecting. As textbooks and popular histories inform us, farmers obtained electric service only because a compassionate federal government established the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The agencies' success in raising the standard of living for millions of Americans contrasted with the failure of the greedy big-city utility companies, which showed little interest in the apparently unprofitable nonurban market. Traditional accounts often describe the nation's population as split in two, separated by access to a magical form of energy: just past cities' limits, a bleak, preindustrial class of citizens endured, literally in near darkness at night and envious of their urban cousins, who enjoyed electrically operated lights, refrigerators, radios, and labor-saving appliances. In Powering American Farms, Richard F. Hirsh challenges the notion that electric utilities neglected rural customers in the years before government intervention. Drawing on previously unexamined resources, Hirsh demonstrates that power firms quadrupled the number of farms obtaining electricity in the years between 1923 and 1933, for example. Though not all corporate managers thought much of the farm business, a cadre of rural electrification advocates established the knowledge base and social infrastructure upon which New Deal organizations later capitalized. The book also suggests that the conventional storyline of rural electrification remains popular because it contains a colorful hero, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and villainous utility magnates, such as Samuel Insull, who make for an engaging—but distorted—narrative. Hirsh describes the evolution of power company managers' thinking in the 1920s and early 1930s—from believing that rural electrification made no economic sense to realizing that serving farmers could mitigate industry-wide problems. This transformation occurred as agricultural engineers in land-grant universities, supported by utilities, demonstrated productive electrical technologies that yielded healthy profits to farmers and companies alike. Gaining confidence in the value of rural electrification, private firms strung wires to more farms than did the REA until 1950, a fact conveniently omitted in conventional accounts. Powering American Farms will interest academic and lay readers of New Deal history, the history of technology, and revisionist historiography.
Energy Culture by Jillian Porter,Maya Vinokour Pdf
This volume investigates energy as a shaping force in Russian and Soviet literature, visual culture, and social practice. Chronologically arranged chapters explain how nineteenth-century ideas about energy informed realist novels and paintings; how the poetics of energy defined pre-Revolutionary and Stalinist utopianism; and how fossil fuels, electricity, and nuclear fission generated distinct aesthetic features in Imperial Russian, Soviet, and post-Soviet literature, cinema, and landscape. The volume’s concentration on Russia responds to a clear need to understand the role the country plays in social, political, and economic processes endangering life on Earth today. The cultural dimension of Russia’s efforts at energy dominance deserves increased scholarly attention not only in its own right, but also because it directly affects global energy policy. As the contributors to this volume argue, the nationally inflected cultural myths that underlie human engagements with energy have been highly consequential in the Anthropocene.
Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Note on Transliteration and Translation -- Acronyms and Abbreviations -- Introduction -- 1 Envisioning a Nuclear-Powered State -- 2: Between Atomic Bombs and Power Plants -- 3: Training Nuclear Experts -- 4: "May the Atom Be a Worker, Not a Soldier!"--5: Chernobyl -- 6: Conclusion -- Epilogue: Writing about Chernobyl after Fukushima -- Biographical Notes -- Methodological Appendix -- List of Interviews -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index
Beamte, Ingenieure und Wissenschaftler des Russischen Reiches und später der Sowjetunion planten die Ausweitung und Modernisierung der Bewässerungssysteme und des Baumwollanbaus in Zentralasien. Die Studie, die das heutige Usbekistan und Turkmenistan untersucht, betont die diskursiven und politischen Kontinuitäten über die Zäsur von 1917 hinweg. Einer der zentralen Topoi war die Umwandlung von ›toten‹ Steppen und Wüsten in ›blühende Oasen‹. Der high modernism erreichte seinen Höhepunkt in den Nachkriegsjahrzehnten. Seit den 1970er Jahren entwickelte sich eine Öko-Kritik an der sowjetischen Modernisierung, die in der Perestrojkazeit an Fahrt aufnahm. Letztendlich trugen die ökologischen und ökonomischen sowie sozialen Folgewirkungen der wachstumsfixierten Modernisierung zum Zusammenbruch des kommunistischen Regimes bei. Officials, engineers and scientists in the Russian Empire and later the Soviet Union envisaged the expansion and modernization of irrigation systems and cotton growing in Central Asia. Focusing on the region of today's Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, this book highlights the continuities in discourse and policies beyond the historical divide of 1917. One of the central topoi was the transformation of 'dead' lands into 'blossoming oases'. High modernism policies hit their peak in the post-war decades. From the 1970s, an ecological critique evolved which gained momentum in the Perestroika period. Ultimately, the grave ecological, economic and social consequences of the growth-fixated modernization contributed to the downfall of the Communist regime.
Author : Frank Jacob Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG Page : 346 pages File Size : 44,6 Mb Release : 2020-11-23 Category : History ISBN : 9783110679496
Emma Goldman and the Russian Revolution by Frank Jacob Pdf
What impact did Bolshevist rule have on Emma Goldmans’s perception of the Russian Revolutions of 1917 and why did she change her mind, going from defending the Russian Revolution to becoming a crusader against Bolshevism? The Russian Revolution changed the world and determined the history of the 20th century as the French Revolution had determined the history of the 19th century. Left-wing intellectuals around the world greeted the February Revolution with enthusiasm as their hope for a new world and social order and the end of capitalism seemed close. However, the joy did not last long as the ideals of February 1917 were replaced by the realities of October 1917 and Lenin crushed the revolution during the following Civil War. Emma Goldman, a famous Russian-born American anarchist was one of the intellectuals, whose admiration for the revolution turned into frustration about its corruption. Emma Goldman and the Russian Revolution discusses her evolving perception of the revolution between 1917 and the early 1920s. The analysis of such an intellectual transformation process, provides a case study of intellectual and revolutionary history alike, adding a closer reading to the research about the famous American anarchist, Emma Goldman, her transnational life and her role as a revolutionary intellectual.
Reader's Guide to the History of Science by Arne Hessenbruch Pdf
The Reader's Guide to the History of Science looks at the literature of science in some 550 entries on individuals (Einstein), institutions and disciplines (Mathematics), general themes (Romantic Science) and central concepts (Paradigm and Fact). The history of science is construed widely to include the history of medicine and technology as is reflected in the range of disciplines from which the international team of 200 contributors are drawn.
Russia's Missing Middle Class: The Professions in Russian History by Harley D. Balzer Pdf
This work describes the emergence of the professions in late tsarist Russia and their struggle for autonomy from the aristocratic state. It also examines the ways in which the Russian professions both resembled and differed from their Western counterparts.
