Conclusions

Abstract

In these final remarks, the threads of the argument are drawn together and the main conclusions set out. The object of the study has been to throw light on some elements of social change during Soviet reconstruction by examining the relationship between the technical intelligentsia and the state. The general assumption at the outset was that Soviet reconstruction involved important shifts in the mode of state domination which were conditioned by the effort to establish certain forms of control over industrial and agricultural production. These processes meant putting politics in command in the sense that the transformation was the result of a state-initiated solution to the contradictions of the NEP, and in the sense that the scope of activity of political agencies was greatly extended. The emphasis, then, has been on the consequences of a process of transformation. This is not to argue that the emergence of the ‘ Stalinist’ state in the 1930s can be accounted for solely in terms of the social upheavals involved in industrial expansion and collectivisation. The fact that a ‘ revolution from above’ was possible at all suggests that in one sense ‘ politics’ was already ‘ in command’ in the NEP period, and by the same token shows the importance of examining the political practices of the agencies of the state in the decade following the October revolution. But the social transformation that began in the late 1920s created the conditions for a critical change in the position of the state within Soviet society, involving a form of generalised ‘ politicisation’ of social relations. The central aim of the book has been to explore this point by looking at its implications in a specific context.