In the technological dead end: Branch science in the east of the USSR in the second half of the 1940s

The paper aims to characterize the civilian segment of the branch science in the East of the USSR after the end of WWII, and assess the capabilities of the branch research and development (R&D) institutions to cope with new scientific, technical and technological issues of the time. The set of the research questions of the paper includes the analysis of the branch science network structure, and reconstruction of the profile and human potential of the research establishments. The study is conducted taking into consideration the specifics of economic and technological challenges that the country faced in the second half of 1940s, and their reflection in S&T "protopolicy". In the course of this study, the author relied on generic research methods, as well as historical and statistical methods, and used data from the federal and local archives. As a result of the research, the following conclusions have been made. After the end of WWII, the USSR faced a number of economic challenges. One of the most important was militarization of its economy, and a huge gap between the defense and civilian sectors of the economy, as referred to the technological level of production. In the meantime, the transfer of technologies and know hows between these two sectors was practically blocked. At the first years after the end of the war, the accents in science and technological policy were made on massive utilization of technologies obtained in the West, mostly as reparations. The government underestimated national science and technological (S&T) policy as a driver of the economic growth in the civilian sector of national economy. Meanwhile, the regional network was very weak and incomprehensible, and incorporated just a limited number of R&D institutes. The thematic focus of the branch R&D institutions science did not properly correspond to the profile of the economy as a whole. The policy to bring branch institutions closer to the economics actors in the regions was not successful. During the war and right after the end of the war, the eastern territories became a place of dislocation of numerous classified military production plants, scientific and technological units, but they operated in the "out-of-region" space without significant connections with the civilian branch science and industrial actors. Thus, the capacities of the branch institutes on the East of the USSR were not enough to solve technological issues of the time, not talking about forthcoming challenges connected with the accelerated industrial growth of the eastern territories. The regional segment of the branch science in the civilian sector of the national economy, as well as in the Soviet civilian economics as a whole in the second half of 1940s was still developing in the framework of the algorithms of the 1930s based on the mobilization paradigm, for which comprehensiveness of economic and science and technology decisions had never been a characteristic point.

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