The Ghost of the Executed Engineer: Technology and the Fall of the Soviet Union (Russian Research Center Studies)
After Soviet engineer Peter A. Palchinsky (1875-1929) was arrested in 1928, his voluminous files of correspondence and professional papers were carted away by the secret police to languish unknown in a Moscow archive until 1991 when Graham, a well-known historian of Russian science and technology, rediscovered them. Two chapters of this work cover Palchinsky's life and professional accomplishments; three show how Soviet engineering is the poorer for not adopting his ideas of "humanitarian engineering." A graduate of the St. Petersburg Institute of Mining, Palchinsky was always interested in the political and economic facets of any construction project (such as housing and living conditions of the crew members). His ideas led to trouble with both the tsarist and Soviet governments. Some of the spectacular failures of Soviet construction (including Chernobyl and the steel complex at Magnitogorsk) Graham blames on Stalin's propensity for building the biggest, regardless of the human aspects. This short, specialized monograph belongs in both engineering and area studies collections.- Marcia L. Sprules, Council on Foreign Relations Lib., New YorkCopyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.