Hero Projects: The Russian Empire and Big Technology from Lenin to Putin by Paul R.Josephson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024. 344 pp. $45.95. ISBN 978‐0‐19‐769839‐6
Year: 2024
Type: book-review
Abstract: This book offers an impressive panorama of the large-scale engineering projects undertaken on the Kremlin's behalf over the past hundred years.The term "heroic" in the book's title refers to their scale, massive mobilization of human and material resources, and symbolic significance as outstanding achievements of the Soviet people or tangible proof of the country's ability to compete with other scientific and technological superpowers in the present.Drawing on a rather eclectic collection of sources, including archival documents, secondary literature, personal observations and communications during travels to the Soviet Union and Russia, websites and media publications, and some "anecdotal evidence," Paul Josephson explores the complex and often ill-fated histories of specific projects: railroads, mines, water constructions, nuclear-powered engines, and bridges.The originality of this book is to trace the strong continuities in the realization of these projects through more than a hundred years, despite the radical changes in political regimes.As the reader may find out, some of them originated, at least as ideas, in the Russian Empire, were carried out mainly during the Soviet regime, but were renewed or completed in the twenty-first century.Thus, the Baikal-Amur Mainline-conceived by Tsarist-era engineers in the late nineteenth century, built from the 1930s to the 1980s, and completed in 2003-represents an archetype of such construction projects of the century.Similarly, the idea of building a Crimean bridge across the Kerch Strait dates back to Tsarist times: the first attempt to build it was made by Stalin in the 1930s, then by Hitler during the occupation, only to be revived and realized in the twenty-first century under Putin.Other ideas for grandiose projects, such as diverting the Siberian rivers to Central Asia and China, reappear recurrently in the political and engineering imagination over this period.In particular, the book examines various forms of historical continuity of "heroic projects" in contemporary Russia with the Soviet legacy: for example, major Russian state corporations in charge of these projects are often inheritors of the Soviet ministries and administrations, as well as the key R&D institutions in nuclear, space, or hydroelectric engineering, all of which have their roots in the Soviet period.But what is even more important, according to Josephson, is that today's large-scale technological projects perform roughly the same functions as they did during the Soviet era.Thus, hydroelectric plants and railroads in Siberia and the Far North, nuclear icebreakers and floating stations, the Crimean Bridge, and other heroic projects may have some social value, but they essentially serve not the people but the military, political, and economic interests of the central power in Moscow.The last chapter of the book, as well as its epilogue, suggests that the significance of these projects as attributes of strong power and imperial domination is reflected in the nostalgic attitudes of politicians, engineers, and laypeople in contemporary Russia, who long for the lost "greatness."This attention to the political and cultural dimensions of big technology is the book's undeniable strength.At the same
Source: The Russian Review
DOI: 10.1111/russ.12715
Author: Olessia Kirtchik
Language: English
Topic: Soviet and Russian History
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4404329061