SCIENCE AND SOCIETY
EDUCATION >>> INNOVATION ^ | |
Fundamental Science > Applied Science > Production and Economy TIMING: 100 years 10 years 1 year MONEY: 1 10 100
MOTIVATION: Cognition Benefit Development and Profit
‘Interaction of Science, Education, and Industry in the modern world. The arrows ^ indicate at flows of information.’677 It should be emphasised that the information can also circulate in all the directions among all the elements of both the sequence and the drawings.
This diagram is not that different from the other scientists’ models of innovation and development. In particular, in his interview, Saxena placed the relations between science, engineering, and technology into the dependence on society, education and culture, leading altogether to the emergence of innovation in the establishment of modern industry, economy, and finance, and summed their functions up in the brackets in the following sequence:
Ecosystem (social and education development) ---> Science (grasping principles of the nature) and Culture (a distinct form of human intellectual activity) ---> Engineering (application of science) ---> Technology and Innovation (making engineering useful for public good and/or commercial gain) ---> Industry, Economy and Finance (contribution to development).678
In these models, education is an important link in development usually providing with the innovation results in 100 years. In the case of space exploration, the Soviet Union, however, could squeeze this term through its social policy into 40 years which lied between the beginning of Lenin’s policy on ‘enlightenment of the masses’ in October 1917 and
677 Kapitsa, Sergey, 2010, Sub’ektivnye zametki ob innovatsyi (Subjective Notes on Innovation), Ekonomicheskie strategii (Economic Strategies); retrieved on 10.11.2014 from the Web, http://www.inesnet.ru/wp-
content/mag_archive/2010_04/ES2010-04-
kapitsa.pdf?fbclid=IwAR1pRLtmMV14lSN8R3ciKjJKM1toRU8ni5vg7xxf3haxvMH0Lcof_p9aA8A.
678 Saxena; the sequence was elaborated together with Chokan Laumulin. This linear sequence is chosen to
indicate a general dependence as in reality meanwhile the process does not exclude both reverse influence and flows of information.
Sputnik’s launch in October 1957 whose global importance was expressed by Lonzarich
(chapters 3 and 5).
According to Paltashev, like in the US, the Soviet rocket design construction was rooted in German technology received through reparations, and at a later stage, it developed from as a missile anti-air bombing system (like that of around Moscow with nuclear technology) into
Sputnik.679 He emphasised that for the USSR it was a question of the nation’s survival
which was indicated by Littlewood as well in chapter 4.
As a result from the shock of the realisation for the Americans that a satellite can be a nuclear rocket able to achieve the territory of the US, the systems of the US education and S&T development were reformed to respond the Soviet challenge, as confirmed by Paltashev and Chitre.680 Both of them emphasised that the US funding attracted was colossal which resulted in the Apollo moon landing mission of 1969. Thus, the space race gave impetus to modern science and technology.681
Meanwhile, after the mid-1960s among the flaws of the Soviet development in S&T Paltashev identified the following. Firstly, it was a division between fundamental and applied sciences in practice despite the massive Soviet efforts to connect them through the establishment of the diverse engineering landscape of the various design bureaus, labs, associations and other institutions around and inside the SAS. Secondly, in the seven levels of engineering,682 the first two levels of the consequential applied science and experimental engineering were in many ways substituted with reverse engineering for copying samples of technology transfer (both of legal or illegal character). Thirdly, on the level 6 of low- and
679 Paltashev. 680 Paltashev; Chitre. 681 Ibid.
682 ' Fundamental science is similar to a God mounting over the surrounding engineering of the following seven
levels in the vertical system of science and engineering:
1. Fundamental Science (Basic Research) provides applied science and engineering with the scientific apparatus, theoretical and experimental solutions.
2. Applied Science (Engineering, or Industrial Research) finds ways and designs models for solving pressing problems, understandable to engineers.
3. Experimental Engineering develops experimental samples, models, and prototypes of products on the basis of achievements of applied science or the inventor's ideas.
4. Production Engineering develops a production version of the product and production technology for guaranteed reproduction of the properties of the products in mass production (also known as know-how). 5. Adaptive and Optimization Engineering tunes technology up for the configuration of the particular
manufacturing plant and optimizes production costs.
6. Low- and Large-Scale and Mass Production Engineering reproduces products with the properties guaranteed and the quality controlled in one or several plants.
7. Service Engineering develops and reproduces service models, special equipment and materials supporting the long life cycle and the safe operation of technologically sophisticated products;’ Paltashev.
large-scale, and mass production engineering the philosophy of producing cheap and poor quality products became dominant. The reverse engineering going top-down in combination with the country’s autarchy revealed as the dead end for the electronic industry in the USSR. In general, reverse engineering for modern ultra-large integral schemes is extremely difficult or impossible, in Paltashev’s account.683
From the micro-electronics industry, Paltashev provided an example of how fundamental science and engineering can be intertwined and juxtaposed into each other, making their separation almost impossible.684 In 1987 TSMC685 was established as a 50/50 JV with Philips Semiconductors.686 They founded a plant in Taiwan. The company started designing chips on the base of that era’s machine languages. The Taiwanese side learned the production and in the 1990s bought the Philips’ share in the company. Nowadays TSMS technology is superior to that of Intel as 7 nanometres technology vs. 10 nanometres base node size technology respectively, and TSMS is investing USD14 billions in R&D including basic research in particular.687 The latter is explained by their production processes which are now developing on the level of fundamental science as the effects emerging are completely unknown in spheres of material science, chemistry, physics and other disciplines. For instance, many processes of semiconductors’ behaviour can be modelled - however on the level of 5 nanometres something new begins. This is also an example of how the development of engineering drives science. Overall, progress in the semiconductor industry is impossible without fundamental science.
For the purpose of the objectivity, it should be mentioned that not all engineers share Bush’s or both Kapitsas’ vision on the primacy of fundamental science across the innovation chain based on the assumption of the corporate R&D units and industrial research to be the central birthplace of a new technological knowledge due an enormous complexity of the technology chains. For example, this assumption corresponds with the visions of such American scholars as Donald Stokes in his Pasteur's Quadrant. Basic
683 Paltashev.
684 Ibid.
685 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Limited also known as Taiwan Semiconductor, is the
world's largest dedicated independent (pure-play) semiconductor foundry; retrieved on 07.06.2018 from the Web, http://www.tsmc.com/english/default.htm.
686 Now NXP semiconductors; retrieved on 07.06.2018 from the Web, https://eu.mouser.com/philips-
semiconductors/.
687 2018, TSMC to invest $14 billion in R&D at Hsinchu facility, April 27, Reuters; retrieved on 07.06.2018
from the Web https://www.reuters.com/article/us-taiwan-tech-tsmc/tsmc-to-invest-14-billion-in-rd-at-
Science and Technological Innovation,688 or very recently - in Cycles of Invention and
Discovery: Rethinking the Endless Frontier 689 by Venkatesh Narayanamurti and
Toluwalogo Odumosu of Harvard University. These academics challenge Vannevar Bush’s vision of priority of basic research across the entire science-engineering- technology chain, insisting on the priority of engineering in the chain and claiming that, since the post-war period, described by Bush, the chain’s methods have changed. However, both Bush and Kapitsa were also very prominent innovative engineers and founders of many global high-tech industries and institutions690 so their united vision is perceived as fundamental for this research.
Unfortunately, the general success stories of the USSR in science and technology is ignored widely in the current policy-making in the vast space of the former Soviet Union which makes a striking contrast to the actual state of these affairs in the USSR itself, according to Saxena, Nigmatulin, and Paltashev.691
To conclude this chapter, it is important to emphasise that in the policy developing science in the Soviet Union as the core for the industrial growth the policy-makers followed the philosophy which was beyond the ideologies and which manifested its everlasting universality and integrity. As outlined by Graham considered in the literature review, the specific characteristics of scientific development in general, and in the Soviet Union in particular, cannot be understood on the ground of the economic foundations of the societies, and innovations are not necessarily products of ‘pressing material necessity.’692 The evidence presented above indicates that this philosophy was well-understood by the Soviet policy-makers on different levels and this could explain the three following things, i.e. that pragmatism in the science policy, the distinct status the Academy of Sciences and scientists possessed in the Soviet Union as well as the persistence of the policy in the time framework.
Thus, after developing the modern methodology of the scientific organisation first and establishing the global record in funding research, the Soviet Union became a leading
688 Stokes, Donald E., 1997, Pasteur's Quadrant: Basic Science and Technological Innovation, Brookings
Institution Press, Washington D.C.
689 Narayanamurti, Venkatesh, and Odumosu, Toluwalogo, 2016, Cycles of Invention and Discovery: Rethinking the Endless Frontier, Harvard University Press.
690 Appendices L and M.
691 Saxena; Nigmatulin; Paltashev. 692 Graham, 194.
country whose science and technology achievements keep contributing to global development. The Soviet human capital and industrial development resulted from the science, education and social policy which became the crucial factor of Soviet modernisation and the reason for the Soviet success on the international arena as summarised in the next, concluding chapter.
Chapter 6 Conclusion
This concluding chapter aims at combining the research results by elaborating on the theoretical findings of the thesis in order to finalise addressing the research question. This would be followed by a consideration of particular theoretical and practical implications. Also, the chapter would discuss the validity of the propositions and highlight possible prospects of future research.
The language and images of the Cold War have affected social research on Soviet development on both sides. In many ways, the Soviet studies fell victim to propagandistic approaches preventing the researcher from an unbiased study of the pre- and during WWII period when the configurations of the political actors on global arena had been dramatically different. Meanwhile, this period was crucial in terms of establishing the Soviet Union’s social, educational, industrial and research base which allowed the nation to meet the challenges, to play catch up with the developed countries, to lead in some areas of development and even to provide various aid to the newly emerged Third World after WWII. The Soviet Union formed its multi-dimensional and pioneering policy in the conditions of the scarce resources of the mainly agricultural economy of the Russian Empire, whose vast territories represented an almost medieval way of life (from a social perspective) after the defeat in WWI, caused by the backwardness of the country. The massive Soviet campaigns for eradication of illiteracy as well as the establishment of education and research throughout the largest country, performed under the umbrella of the newly born Soviet identity, aimed to transform and unite the society, various in its religions and indigenous ethnic origins, through development, as evident at the example of Kazakhstan in the thesis. The industrial development was initiated through the implementation of the GOELRO energy plan, followed by the system of the five-year plans. Following Marxism, the centralisation of the resources socialised was a logical action dictated by the need to accumulate them in one place for further distributions into the most strategic directions, chosen as the locomotives of development.
During the Cold War, scholars’ views on the reasons of the Soviet successes varied widely, e.g. from Sutton almost totally denying any Soviet endogenous technological achievements to
Gvishiani solely praising them and using a vague methodology to justify ‘economic effects’ from the patents.
Both sides were ideologically motivated in ignoring different angles. Sutton as the most profound case did so in basing his judgement entirely on the economic market point of view, considering Soviet development exclusively as technology transfer driven and missing the importance of the research, education and social policy for the development of technology. Meanwhile, many of the Soviet scholars emphasising the Marxist non-economic and social factors avoided, on the other hand, discussions of the exogenous impact during Soviet industrialisation and instead concentrated on the class struggle and the dogmatic postulates of the inevitability of ‘the victory of the socialist productive forces’ to explain the modern ‘relations of production’ (Marx).
The arguments could reach the level of absurdity as it took place with Sutton who rejected acknowledging the lion’s share of the Soviet scientific advances (including Nikolay Semyonov, the 1956 Nobel laureate in Chemistry,693 the discipline in which, according to Sutton, no significant Soviet figure emerged);694 almost ignored the Soviet space programme, and placed Sputnik and aircraft (with thousands of their technologies of many military and civil types, and around 100 of various types of Soviet civil aircrafts produced annually during the Cold War695) in the same innovation category as electro-drill on the unconditional ground of the improbability of the Soviet planning system for innovation due to the intrinsic flaws. Meanwhile, in his Cold War language, the words ‘West’ and ‘Western’ were widely used and applied to the period of the 1920s and 30s, and, in particular, to the period of WWII of 1939-45 when the USSR, Great Britain and the US used to be the allies at war against Germany, Japan, Italy, and other ‘Western’ countries.
More importantly, Sutton viewed any technological development in general as fundamentally driven by the particular economic factors, i.e. the free market forces. In this approach, entrepreneurship was viewed as the driving force for innovation in seeking profitable and practical solutions as chosen from the various technologies available and pushing, therefore, science and technology forward. His view on science being about the development of theory to be tested in laboratories and technology as ‘the selective
693 Semyonov. 694 Chapter 2.
695 Hartley, Keith, 2014, The Political Economy of Aerospace Industries: A Key Driver of Growth and International Competitiveness?, Edward Elgar Publishing, 21.
application of scientific findings to industrial production’696was questioned by both the fundamental and applied physicists interviewed for this thesis, who clarified that science is about the development of understanding of basic principles tested and parameterised by conducting experiments.697
As well, in attributing, for instance, the Soviet Atomic Project solely to the exogenous impact, Sutton completely ignored the Soviet school of physics created by Ioffe almost from scratch.698 It had been conducting thorough nuclear research, both of experimental and theoretical character, since the 1920s and especially in the 1930s when nuclear physics had purely theoretical value.699
Meanwhile, the fact that in the post-war period the Soviet Union boasted breakthroughs in space exploration, nuclear energy, and some other extraordinarily innovative and specialised high-tech industries required another explanation for Soviet development beyond the technology transfer and the market or class struggle factors. After more than 25 years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, an impartial re-evaluation of Soviet development was required and the research question for this thesis became formulated as follows: How in a quarter of a century could such a backward country as the Soviet Union
advance in its human capital and industrial development to an approximate level of the major powers of the era?
In addressing it, what emerged as substantial is that, in Marx’ language, the industrial ‘basis’ defining the ‘relations of production’ as ‘superstructure’ was identical for both ‘capitalism’ and ‘socialism,’ although it was viewed in both systems as the opposite to each other as being driven by either the market forces or planning respectively. It placed the identification of that industrial driving force, likely, equal for both systems, as a pivotal approach for this study. Meanwhile, the dichotomy from social scholars’ opinions began disappearing while reading the literature by the scientists and engineers. They looked united in their evaluations of the drivers of the modern industrial development including the Soviet Union. The drivers were science and education.
696 Chapter 2.
697 Saxena, Lonzarich. 698 Holloway.
Indeed while studying the literature further, it was identified that the Academy of Sciences of the USSR as the source of knowledge possessed a unique and privileged status in the Soviet system. It was not a part of the planning mechanism and represented a democratic institution whose leadership was elected in secret ballot by the academicians.
Furthermore, as became evident, the Soviet Union was the pioneer in elaborating the modern scientific methodology in the 1920s and the global leader in the budget allocations for R&D which, while gradually and persistently growing, exceeded 5 per cent of the GNP by 1980 to remain the global record up to date. It is essential to highlight that although science was officially recognised as distinct from the Marxist theory,700 within the SAS it had been developing in harmonisation, although not without problems, with the humanities and social sciences. For example, the academician Sergey Oldenburg (Ol’denburg), who was permanent secretary of the SAS and mastered the Soviet pioneering methodological approach of the scientific organisation,701 was an orientalist, an indologist, by his education and research specialisation.702 As well, this fact, on the one hand, illustrates a possible important role, social scientists can play in science, and, on other, responds to the challenge of the author being a non-scientist as described in the methodology section.
The Academy’s expansion throughout the vast territory of the USSR included all 15 republics of the nation, covered all the spectrum of research, attracted the most talented youth and turned the Soviet Union into the second leading scientific country in the world after the US. Unlike there, science in the USSR, however, was set up against the planning economy and society in contrast to the US market economy and pluralist politics, being, nonetheless, the universal phenomenon. Evidently, the development of science and education in the USSR became ‘the strategic investment object’703 of the socialised national product for the overall development.
In addressing the research question further to highlight the propositions on the connection between science and industry, on the one hand, and the establishment and interaction of the Soviet science, education and various social policies juxtaposed in the whole integral set, on
700 Graham, chapter 2.
701 Ibid.
702 Birthday Anniversary of Sergey Oldenburg, Academician Orientalist, One of the Founders of the Russian
School for Study of Indian Culture, Presidential Library; retrieved on 22.05.2019 from the Web,
https://www.prlib.ru/en/history/619575.
the other, it required studying new data. They were obtained from two kinds of the primary sources, i.e. the interviews and various documents related to the era.