Dissertation Research: The Rockets' Red Glare: State, Society, and Technological Innovation in the Soviet Union, 1917-1957

Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA

Investigators

Abstract

This dissertation project provides travel funds to gather data in the U.S. and the Russia to examine the changing relationship between technology and Soviet society using rocketry as an entry point. The case of missile technology provides an excellent window into the relationship between technology and the state. The project focuses on how engineers and scientists handled the tensions between indigenous and appropriated technology on the one hand, and the tradeoffs between incremental and radical innovation on the other. Through the lens of Soviet rocketry, the project focuses on these two dichotomies within the broader context of Soviet history, and explores the relationship between technology (indigenous, appropriated, radical, incremental) and three elements of the Soviet state: public discourse on the role of rocket technology in modernization, the creation and evolution of institutions to develop rockets, and state policy towards rocket technology. The project will trace these relationships over a forty-year span from the emergence of the popular discourse on rocketry in the 1920s to the galvanization of industrial power that led to the launch of Sputnik in 1957. Finally, the project hopes to provide some final thoughts on the nature of knowledge and its relationship to state, society, and ideas. Four archives in Russia, and two in the U.S. will be visited under NSF funding.