“It Won't Be So Expensive”: Approaches to the Organization of Scientific Work in the 1930s.

Abstract

The article examines the change in approaches to stimulating and organizing scientific work during the years of Soviet industrialization. On the example the Central Commission for Improving the Life of Scientists and the Commission for Assistance to Scientists (since 1931) the author characterizes the transition from socio-economic support to stimulate collectivism and high rates of scientific output, especially actualized under Taylor's influence and during the years of the Stakhanov movement. The author concludes these changes affected the industrial culture of that time because of the ideas of the individual scientific work changed of the division of labor and providing production capacities of scientific collectives. Special attention is paid to the projects of organizing collective research – “auxiliary workshops” at scientific organizations. The research is based on the documents of the unpublished analytical report “On accelerating the pace of scientific work” and the materials of its discussion at the meeting of the Commission for Assistance to Scientists, identified in the State Archive of the Russian Federation.