Technology and Legitimacy: Soviet Aviation and Stalinism in the 1930s

Between 1933 and 1938 the Soviet Union attempted a number of world records in aviation. The flood of books and articles, posters, films, postage stamps, and folk art commemorating these events has now nearly faded from the memory of all but a few collectors. Yet the significance of these attempts goes well beyond their purely technical importance. The argument developed below views these events in a more general context and proposes a novel interpretation of their significance, focusing on the relationship between technology and social change in a developing society. The legitimizing function of technology in such a society has not received the attention it deserves from historians and social scientists. The case study which follows suggests some of the political uses technological achievements may have for the leaders of a country in transition to a more modern social structure. Specifically, this article develops the following interpretation: During the 1930s Stalin and his associates used world records in aviation as a means of winning support for his regime at home and abroad, and of counterbalancing the effect of the purges. While this effort met with some notable successes, it also had the effect of detracting attention from the development of certain kinds of aviation necessary to Soviet defense and contributed significantly to the Soviet military disasters of 1941. One of the more interesting questions debated by historians in recent years concerns the degree of Soviet preparedness at the time of the German attack in 1941. Did the Stalinist emphasis on heavy industry, particularly the defense industry, make the USSR as fully prepared for war as possible? That was the position argued by Stalin