The rise of engineers in Russia - article ; n°4 ; vol.31, pg 539-568

Alfred J.Rieber

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Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique - Année 1990 - Volume 31 - Numéro 4 - Pages 539-568
Alfred J. Rieber, L'ascension des ingénieurs en Russie.
La profession d'ingénieur en Russie doit beaucoup de son code de valeurs et de son idéologie professionnelle à la tradition des « grandes écoles », telle qu'elle a été transmise par les ingénieurs français, pénétrés d'idéaux saint-simoniens, qui constituaient le personnel d'encadrement de l'Institut d'ingénieurs des transports, au début du XIXe siècle. Jusque-là la société technologique conçue par Pierre Ier s'était heurtée à la résistance de la noblesse à l'éducation technique, aux besoins concurrentiels de l'armée en ingénieurs et aux politiques économiques changeantes de l'État. Au milieu du XIXe siècle, les ingénieurs russes étaient à la tête du ministère des Transports et ils instaurèrent résolument une politique étatique de développement économique.
Alfred J. Rieber, The rise of engineers in Russia.
The Russian engineering profession owes much of its professional ethos and ideology to the tradition of les grandes écoles as transmitted by French engineers imbued with St. Simonian ideals who staffed the Institute of Transportation Engineers in the early nineteenth century. Until then, Peter I's vision of a technological society had encountered resistance of the nobility to technical education, competing demands of the army for engineers and changing economic policies of the state. By the mid-nineteenth century Russian engineers controlled the Ministry of Transportation and firmly established a statist policy of economic development.
30 pages
Source : Persée ; Ministère de la jeunesse, de l’éducation nationale et de la recherche, Direction de l’enseignement supérieur, Sous-direction des bibliothèques et de la documentation.

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• Publié par: CAHIERS_DU_MONDE_RUSSE_ET_SOVIETIQUE
• Publié le: 01 janvier 1990
• Nombre de lectures: 680
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

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Alfred J. Rieber
The rise of engineers in Russia
In: Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique. Vol. 31 N°4. Octobre-Décembre 1990. pp. 539-568.
Résumé
Alfred J. Rieber, L'ascension des ingénieurs en Russie.
La profession d'ingénieur en Russie doit beaucoup de son code de valeurs et de son idéologie professionnelle à la tradition des «
grandes écoles », telle qu'elle a été transmise par les ingénieurs français, pénétrés d'idéaux saint-simoniens, qui constituaient le
personnel d'encadrement de l'Institut d'ingénieurs des transports, au début du XIXe siècle. Jusque-là la société technologique
conçue par Pierre Ier s'était heurtée à la résistance de la noblesse à l'éducation technique, aux besoins concurrentiels de l'armée
en ingénieurs et aux politiques économiques changeantes de l'État. Au milieu du XIXe siècle, les ingénieurs russes étaient à la
tête du ministère des Transports et ils instaurèrent résolument une politique étatique de développement économique.
Abstract
Alfred J. Rieber, The rise of engineers in Russia.
The Russian engineering profession owes much of its professional ethos and ideology to the tradition of les grandes écoles as
transmitted by French engineers imbued with St. Simonian ideals who staffed the Institute of Transportation Engineers in the
early nineteenth century. Until then, Peter I's vision of a technological society had encountered resistance of the nobility to
technical education, competing demands of the army for engineers and changing economic policies of the state. By the mid-
nineteenth century Russian engineers controlled the Ministry of Transportation and firmly established a statist policy of economic
development.
Citer ce document / Cite this document :
Rieber Alfred J. The rise of engineers in Russia. In: Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique. Vol. 31 N°4. Octobre-Décembre
1990. pp. 539-568.
doi : 10.3406/cmr.1990.2249
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/cmr_0008-0160_1990_num_31_4_2249ALFRED J. RIEBER
THE RISE OF ENGINEERS IN RUSSIA
The appointment in 1862 of P.P. Mel'nikov as the first professionally trained
engineer to occupy the post of Minister of Transportation symbolized the coming
of age of the Russian engineering profession following a century and a half evolu
tion toward a corporate identity. From then on engineers consistently occupied
positions of influence and power in the top ranks of the Imperial and Soviet state
bureaucracies. At crucial moments in Russia's development they have taken a
leading role in the big political debates over economic policy as, for example, in
the 1860's, 1890's, 1920's and 1960's. The engineer served as both civil servant
and bureaucratic politician, complementary social roles in the continental tradition
of professionalization. The closest parallel with the Russian experience is provided
by the French. The rise of the Russian engineering profession, like the French,
diverges sharply from the Anglo-American tradition of free and independent, tech
nically trained specialists operating in the economic milieu of market capita
lism. Rather, it takes its ethical and organizational inspiration from another
source: the belief that the professions offer a way of life morally superior to the
marketplace. Implicit in this view is a determined effort to control the untram-
meled effects of competition rather than an absolute opposition to capital
ism.1 The similarity of the engineering professions in France and Russia does not
simply reflect the similarity in bureaucratic structures of two highly centralized
unitary state systems. Beyond this, a close organic connection was established in
the early nineteenth century between French engineers of les grandes écoles and
the first generation of Russian professional of whom P.P. Mel'nikov was
one of the outstanding representatives. Before that the Russian state had strug
gled unsuccessfully for over a century to create a cadre of civil engineers that
could carry out the grandiose designs for public works first planned and initiated
by Peter the Great.
Peter's vision of Russia as a great power was grounded in a first attempt by a
European statesman to create what Jacques Ellul has called a society "based on
technique," that is a combination of technology and social organization aimed at
production.2 The principal components of the new society would be, maximizing
in Peter's mind, a modern army and armaments industry, planned urban conglom-
Cahiers du Monde russe et soviétique, XXXI (4), octobre-décembre 1990, pp. 539-568. 540 ALFRED J. RIEBER
erations, with St. Petersburg as a model, and massive public works, mainly an elaborate
canal system that would join the major waterways of eastern and northern Russia,
the Caspian- Volga-Baltic connection, and link the major productive centers of the
country into an integrated economic whole. He sought to create the necessary
cadres of engineers by introducing a technically oriented school system capped by
an Academy of Sciences and recruiting skilled foreigners. Willing to employ pri
vate entrepreneurs, he soon found them to be unreliable and came to rely almost
exclusively on the driving force of the state in constructing and managing the new
enterprises.
Impressive as his achievements were, he failed in his efforts to lay the foundat
ions for a permanent educational system upon which the success of a society
based on technique must rest. The nobility resisted technical education; the
Church turned against it; the Academy of Sciences preferred pure research to pract
ical application of technology; military priorities swallowed up the few well-
trained engineers who graduated from the technical schools.3 The persistent and
crucial need for military engineers led to the creation of an Artillery and
Engineering Corps in mid-eighteenth century. But from 1762 to 1819 the Corps
produced only 219 engineers out of 2,000 graduates. In a country almost con
stantly at war, they devoted their careers to constructing fortifications. From
mid-century to 1 809 not a single important new construction project was undertak
en by a Russian engineering officer.4 Foreigners were responsible for the comp
letion of part of Peter's canal system and other public works built during this pe
riod. Catherine the Great launched a double-barelled campaign to stimulate engi
neering by turning over many slate enterprises to private entrepreneurs and estab
lishing two new engineering schools, one of hydraulics and another for mining
engineers, both staffed by foreign teachers. But the private owners showed no
interest in sponsoring technological innovations and the schools once again failed
to attract well prepared students.5 For the nobility the fields of glory were not to
be found in the mud fiats of Lake Ladoga or the Ural mining pits.
The revival of Russian engineering in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries owes much to the irascible Paul I who was determined to reverse his
mother's economic policies by shifting emphasis back to direct intervention of the
state in constructing public works, managing industry and training specialists for bureaucratic agencies reorganized along functional lines. Too often dismis
sed by the older literature as an erratic and confused if not clinically insane man,
he has been to a large extent rehabilitated as an important figure in the develop
ment of a rational-bureaucratic state. His role in the field of engineering bears
out the revisionist view.6 His main achievements, expanded and refined under
his sons, Alexander I and Nicholas I, were to reconfirm the leading role of engi
neering in stimulating economic growth, to separate military and civil engineering
and to place engineering education on a level comparable to that of the best West
European academies.
One of Paul's early decrees established a separate department of waterways
under the energetic Count E.A. Sivers, a Baltic noble who had served under
Catherine as governor general of Novgorod and director of waterways of the
St. Petersburg, Novgorod and Tver provinces. But the most prominent positions
in his department were still occupied by foreigners including some who became
leading figures in the early decades of the nineteenth century when a real corpo- THE RISE OF ENGINEERS IN RUSSIA 541
rate sense finally took shape among engineers: Count Peter Kornil'evich van
Sukhtelen, a Dutchman who later served as inspector of the Engineering
Department, Franz-Pavel Devolant (Sainte-de-Wollant), de Vitte and
others. Decades of training Russian engineers had not produced a cadre of engi
neer-administrators capable of running a specialized section of the depart
ment. Yet under this foreign leadership a great decade of canal building follow
ed. By 1811 the Mariinskii and Tikhvinskii systems were in full operation thus
providing two alternate waterways linking the Volga Basin with the Baltic ports.7
At the same time Paul reestablished the Mining College and appointed one of
th