Soviet patriotism in the context of technological security of the USSR

Ivanov Andrei Alexandrovich ORCID: 0000-0003-4097-9447 Doctor of History Associate Professor; Department of Humanities; Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation 196084, Russia, Moscow, Leningradsky ave., 51 ivanovaa85@list.ru Other publications by this author

Modern approaches to the concept of "security" imply the inclusion in the structure of this category not only protection from military threats, but also many other aspects of the social order: economic, food, information, etc. Since the publication of the works of H. Maula ^[11] and R. Ulman ^[17], researchers, entrepreneurs and statesmen have increasingly begun to pay attention to the non-military aspects of the country's security system. Thus, already in the 1990s in Japan, for many members of the government, the concept of "energy cost" became noticeably more closely related to national security than the terms "military alliance" or "nuclear weapons" ^{[15, p. 80]}. The development of the domestic security system after the collapse of the USSR was quite similar in this matter – today the Russian Federation has many years of experience in developing strategic documents in the field of protection against various types of threats.

Despite the fact that the theses on the importance of combating non-military factors of potential crises were fully articulated and reasoned in the scientific literature only in the 1980s, the imperative requirements of the technological order, as J. Galbraith calls them ^{[4, p. 11-12]}, and up to that point had a significant impact on the political course of many countries. In particular, attempts to maintain economic or political superiority by monopolizing any innovations have taken place in the world since the Early Modern Period. For example, in China for a long time there was a ban on the export of raw materials for the manufacture of gunpowder, in Japan similar measures were taken with regard to porcelain, and the Dutch tried in every possible way to preserve the secret of the production of salted herring, the trade of which brought huge revenues. In the XVIII century. in England, laws were even passed prohibiting the labor migration of qualified specialists to other countries, as well as the export of documentation for promising technical developments.

In the context of conflicting relations between the "great powers" in the XIX–XX centuries, the advantages that innovations in various fields of science and technology (metallurgy, pharmaceuticals, communications, etc.) provided could have an impact on the outcome of international confrontations. As a result, the governments of many states sought to motivate researchers and inventors to discover new metals and alloys, medicines, means of communication, etc. The key tool in this regard was patent law, which provided a potential opportunity to monetize the creative potential of an individual. That is, the main type of motivation in such a capitalist system was the financial interest of the innovator. It must be admitted that the enrichment of T. Edison, G. Ford or S. Morse was due not only to their talents, but also to the established system of social relations, which guaranteed (at least at the legislative level) the inviolability of property rights, personal security, and the opportunity to participate in competition.

This allowed the Austrian economist J. Schumpeter argued that the basis of innovative development, ultimately, is the entrepreneurial spirit associated with the search for advantages in competition – he put forward this idea in the book "Theory of Economic Development" published in 1912 ^[13]. Thus, the use of a new type of raw materials, a new technology for the production of goods or a new way of organizing labor was aimed at extracting any benefits for the initiator of this process.

The supporters of the socialist mode of production expressed disagreement with such a statement of the issue at the turn of the XIX–XX centuries. Appealing to the existence of the effect of "exploitation" under capitalism, they believed that innovations often served the interests not of the entire society, but only of the propertied minority. On this occasion, K. Marx wrote: "usually the most worthless and pitiful representatives of monetary capital derive the greatest profit from any progress of universal labor and the human spirit and their social application by combined labor" ^{[9, p. 199]}. An alternative to the Schumpeterian interpretation of innovation cycles for Marxists was a society free from various forms of alienation and antagonisms, in which everyone's labor and creative contribution would benefit all mankind. Scientific achievements in such a system should not have become the property of only elite groups, but should have been freely distributed.

The potential benefit from the large-scale integration of innovators from the representatives of the working class into the established schemes of scientific and technical creativity was due to the fact that the class consciousness of the proletariat was supposed to serve as a deterrent to the "moral degradation" that traditionally followed, according to K. Marx, technological progress in world history ^{[10, p. 578]}. In other words, the proletarians had to avoid the development of individual and class egoism, acting in the interests of the world labor movement in building a classless society. This distinguished them from bourgeois specialists, whose motivation lay in the financial plane, and whom, according to V. I. Lenin, after the victory of the socialist revolution, "equality of wages in its full amount" awaits ^{[6, p. 25]}.

Marxists were probably impressed by G. Hegel's idea that the invention of technical devices is not creativity akin to art, but rather a kind of craft that can be mastered in practice ^{[5, p. 73-74]}. Hence, it was enough to equip the liberated proletarians with special knowledge and skills in various fields of science in order to inspire the process of their creation of innovative mechanisms, the discovery of new laws of nature and technology, chemical compounds, etc. for the benefit of mankind. One of the arguments in favor of this approach was the examples of Russian serf inventors (E.P. Nikonov, S.I. Badaeva, D.S. Bokareva, etc.), whose innovative proposals could not contain even class restrictions – therefore, the liberation of creative labor from class inequality can give such activity a strong impetus.

The disadvantages of this approach were discovered shortly after the victory of the socialist revolution in Russia. The Soviet state was in vital need of improving the country's technological capabilities both in terms of ensuring defense capability against the background of escalating armed conflicts, and in the context of increasing labor productivity in industry and agriculture, not to mention improving the quality of life of citizens (housing, transport, food, etc.). Although the number of applications for registration of inventions in the USSR from 1922 to 1925, it grew 8.2 times, most of the proposals received from representatives of the proletariat were of the "complementary" type, that is, they aimed at a more rational use of existing equipment, rather than creating fundamentally new developments.

As for qualified pre-revolutionary specialists, many of them left Soviet Russia back in 1918-1920. Thus, V. V. Zvorykin, who became one of the founders of television abroad, and the pioneer of helicopter construction I. I. Sikorsky, and the future creator of video recorders A.M. Ponyatov, emigrated abroad. Some of the scientists who disagreed with fully cooperating with the Soviet government in the new configuration of social relations were deported from the USSR. For example, in 1922, more than 80 representatives of the creative intelligentsia were expelled, among whom were the philosophers N. O. Lossky and N. A. Berdyaev, astrophysicist V. V. Stratonov, sociologist P. A. Sorokin, zoologist M. M. Novikov and others. The scientific and inventive activities of the remaining "old" cadres took place in conditions of a forced, hard-won and very fragile compromise between the principles of scientific methodology and the ideological attitudes of the ruling party. This, in turn, created risks, both of artificially blocking promising developments and of replacing science with pseudoscience (the history of Soviet genetics is very indicative in this regard).

Against the background of a series of crises of the "new economic policy" and the "military alarm" of 1927, the question became urgent not so much about correcting the existing scheme of scientific and technical development, as about its cardinal revision.

One of the elements of this transformation was the organization of research institutes and design bureaus of the prison type, subordinate to the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs. Scientists arrested for various categories of crimes worked in such institutions, and the motive for making scientific discoveries and creating new technical devices in this case was not only to obtain personal benefits (exemption from criminal prosecution, receiving government awards), but also the fear of increased repression. The ideological justification for the creation of the so-called "sharashkas" was voiced by G. G. Yagoda as follows: "Only working conditions in a paramilitary environment are able to ensure the effective activity of specialists as opposed to the corrupting environment of civilian institutions" ^{[2, p. 45]}. As a result, thanks to the appearance of such a system in the USSR, many advanced weapons and ammunition systems, medicines were created, discoveries were made in the field of radiation research, etc.

Nevertheless, this measure was suboptimal, since the integration of scientists into innovative schemes using means of state coercion did not correspond to Marxist theses on the liberation of labor from exploitation. No wonder S. A. Piontkovsky believed that in the "Stalinist" Soviet Union, as in pre-revolutionary society, innovations still served only the interests of the political elite, and the state generously sponsored inventions that made it possible to exploit the masses more effectively ^{[1, p. 160]}.

At the same time, one should not forget that it was precisely the proof of the existence of the socialist mode of production of noticeable advantages over capitalism that was the most important element in the propaganda of Marxist ideas in the foreign arena, and the facts of repression against scientists gave opponents of socialism a serious argument in the dispute about the correctness of the Marxist understanding of the social structure.

For example, the theologian R. Niebuhr came to the conclusion that collective labor cannot overcome the effect of exploitation, since associations of individuals are much more selfish, radical and conflictual than individuals themselves. In his opinion, within the framework of the collective, the principle of efficiency and the pursuit of benefit automatically overshadows the ethical norms of individuals, even those who are ready to sacrifice selfishness to universal harmony ^[12]. In turn, the writer A. Rand, in a number of literary works, will describe the interaction of innovators and ordinary people as similar to slavery, in which the talents of gifted people serve to meet the needs of ordinary members of society, who make up the majority. The writer believed that the logical reaction in such a situation is the self-exclusion of the most talented people, who have achieved success through their own will and hard work, from supporting a regime that exploits their talents in the name of those who are deprived of these talents.

In fact, one of the important omissions in the construction of the socialist model of innovative development in the USSR was the underestimation of the factor of preserving capitalism in other countries of the world. The parallel existence of these conflicting socio-economic systems posed the threat of using the discoveries and developments of Soviet scientists abroad in the interests of exploiters, not exploited ones. An attempt to solve this paradox was the artificial restriction of contacts between Soviet specialists and foreign colleagues, but these measures could not completely eliminate the effect of cultural diffusion, since there was no ownership right, for example, to institutional innovations, and they could be transplanted completely freely.

It turned out that the Russian scientist, being formally called upon to act in the interests of the "world proletariat", in practice had to serve only the interests of the Soviet Union, the only socialist state in the world, with his work. That is, the motivation of the Soviet innovator could be conditionally described as "patriotic". Meanwhile, the Bolsheviks' attitude to the phenomenon of patriotism was very contradictory due to different interpretations of the famous thesis of K. Marx and F. Engels from the "Manifesto of the Communist Party" that "the workers have no Fatherland." Some Marxists (for example, P. Lafargue and G.V. Plekhanov) interpreted this phrase in the sense that the proletariat does not have a homeland only until the overthrow of the power of the bourgeoisie, and with the victory of the socialist revolution, the situation will radically change. V. I. Lenin probably leaned towards this version ^{[7, p. 92]}. A somewhat different point of view was held by A.V. Lunacharsky, who repeatedly called the idea of patriotism "false", he opposed to it the concepts of "political enlightenment" and "communist education" in the new (Soviet) school. This position was close to many employees of the People's Commissariat of Education — for example, V. P. Zatonsky pointed out the danger of resuscitation of nationalist slogans under the guise of "Russian red patriotism", which he considered "a relic of the old national ideology" in the minds of some Bolsheviks ^{[3, p. 63-64]}.

L. D. Trotsky foresaw the possibility of a contradiction between these interpretations back in 1928, that is, just on the eve of the "modernization breakthrough" of the first "five-year plan". In his opinion, "revolutionary patriotism can only have a class character," and "this patriotism should form an integral part of revolutionary internationalism." In turn, "the theory of the feasibility of socialism in a particular country breaks the internal connection between the patriotism of the victorious proletariat and the defeatism of the proletariat of bourgeois countries" ^{[16, p. 57]}.

In fact, the effective functioning of the Soviet scientific and technical sector at the turn of the 1920s - 1930s unexpectedly turned out to be directly related to the solution of ideological issues.

A way out of this predicament was found in the synthesis of Marxist-Leninist ideology with elements of "supranational" patriotism, which N.V. Ustryalov called "national Bolshevism" ^{[14, p. 53]}. Thus, the concept of "Homeland" has lost its marginal character since the late 1920s, and famous cultural figures (M. Gorky, V. V. Mayakovsky, K. A. Timiryazev, etc.) in literature and propaganda began to be portrayed as patriots. However, the "Motherland" was now interpreted not in a state-territorial, but in a socio-political sense, and was more associated with the Communist Party, the Komsomol, the trade union movement, etc. For example, in 1928, the artist A. I. Strakhov created a propaganda poster "My Homeland, Komsomol", and director L. D. Lukov in 1931 shot a series of films with the same name. According to the memoirs of N. V. Ustryalov, in the summer of 1935, M. S. Shaginyan even expressed the idea that the USSR should be considered the homeland because only here was the full-fledged construction of socialism.

Probably, this hybrid ideological construction, coupled with state investments in industrial modernization and the creation of new social elevators such as the Izotov and Stakhanov movements, was able to ensure the functioning of the Soviet innovation mechanism by the middle of the "second five-year plan". At least in the 1930s, not only important discoveries were made in the field of fundamental science (circulatory physiology, high energy physics, synthesis of artificial polymers, etc.), but, according to contemporaries, ordinary workers and engineers actively joined the invention. Examples include not only the famous B. I. Satovsky (excavator designer) or V. P. Glushko (rocket engine developer), but also the metallurgist M. N. Mazai, machinist P. F. Krivonos, blacksmith A. F. Busygin, etc. An important role in this was probably played by the creation in 1932. The All-Union Society of Inventors and Innovators, which brought together several hundred thousand experts and enthusiastic innovators (most of them of proletarian origin).

In the future, this experience will form the basis for the formulation by Marxists of the XX century of new approaches to the organization of creative work. Not only the idea of the possibility of building a system of libidinal labor relations will be put forward, when the main factor of motivation for work is not material reward, but getting pleasure from the very process of creating various benefits ^{[8, p. 176]}, but also the operatic concept of "virtuosity" as an appeal to the improvement of productive forces through the realization of such human qualities, like curiosity, ingenuity, artistry and the power of imagination ^[18].

In general, it can be concluded that the first attempts of the Bolsheviks to combine their own ideas about the socialist mode of production with the methods available to them for solving practical problems in the field of activating scientific and technical creativity during the 1920s - 1930s did not differ in consistency. The global task of building a fundamentally new mechanism for creating and introducing innovations was limited in solving not only by the mentality of the "old" cadres, the inexperience of the proletariat or the lack of a clear plan for transformation, but also by the limited tools of the Soviet authorities. In this regard, the appeal to the instruments of state coercion (violence and the threat of its use) testified to the lack of new ideas in the field of motivation for invention by the country's leadership. Relying on a relatively new construct of "Soviet patriotism" could probably have brought more significant results, but its integration into the Soviet social mechanism took time, so it will give full fruits only in the 1950s – 1960s.