Abstract

Due to the relative “backwardness” of Russian society and the Russian economy, all the more devastated by war and revolution, one of the most important elements of the great Soviet effort at “modernization” during the 1920s was the technical intelligentsia. This group, however, was highly problematic within the context of the Bolshevik revolution; the technical specialist was considered necessary, yet his very necessity made him dangerous. Unlike the vanguard party intellectual, the technical specialist had not been ascribed a particular role in the communist society. Kendall Bailes' Technology and Society under Lenin and Stalin analyzes the ambiguous role thai emerged for the Soviet technostructure during the twenties and thirties, and demonstrates the group's significance for Soviet history.