The Implications of Stalin’s Technocracy

Abstract

Stalin’s postwar system marked the Soviet Union’s passage from the convulsion and disorder of revolution to the routinized professionalization common to most industrial societies. In the late Stalin years the career paths offering status and security became more clearly delineated, and for industrial supervisors, their families, and even their employees, life became more predictable. The stability and emerging normalcy of the era were new and welcomed phenomena in Soviet history. Unlike the situation in the 1930s, radical change and social upheaval were not part of the late Stalinist landscape. In the Introduction I asked if something about the postwar experience might have helped build popular acceptance or tolerance for Stalin’s regime. This study of elite formation indicates that the job security and enhanced status enjoyed by postwar technicians and engineers may well have inclined the technical intelligentsia to develop a fondness for Stalinism, at least in its postwar manifestation.