E-grāmata: Hero Projects: The Russian Empire and Big Technology from Lenin to Putin

"Hero projects" - such large scale technologies for military, resource exploitation and power production as smelters and mines, pipelines and railroads, hydropower stations and canals, and nuclear reactors - have been central to Russian development from Lenin and Stalin to Putin. Because Russia's military might and economic strength depends on its resources, its leaders determined to mine them, enrich them fire up boilers and turn turbines with them, and use poorly equipped workers and gulag prisoners totame them. From Arctic tundra to deep forest taiga, from the northwest to arid Central Asia and the Far East, they built roads and railroads, boilers and factories, canals and irrigation networks, all for the benefit of the state. The embrace of "hero projects," "projects of the century," and megaprojects. as successive regimes have called them, continues to be a major feature of Russian political rule into the twenty-first century. If the tools and devices were modernized and became more powerful and efficient, the purposes of enhancing state power and military might have remained. Many Soviet-era and Soviet-inspired projects have been reborn in the twenty-first century through massive infusions of state funding, to the benefit of oligarchs. All of themreflect the desire to enhance state power; placate citizens in a time of economic or military challenges; and demonstrate to the world the nation's technological verve. Sadly, hero projects have served the Kremlin's military to seize territory, as the conquering of East Europe after WW II and the ongoing war against Ukraine reveal"--

In Hero Projects, Paul R. Josephson traces how, over the last one hundred years, the Russian tsars, commissars, and oligarchs embraced megaprojects to create the world's largest empire. Built by peasants, gulag prisoners, and Communist volunteers, the projects are wide-ranging and numerous--including nuclear power stations, pipelines across the tundra, railroads from Europe to the Pacific Ocean, and hydropower stations and canals. Sweeping in scope, Hero Projects establishes the strong continuities in political culture in Russian history; reshapes the meaning of empire, extending it to include internal colonization; and expands environmental and social history through the study of big technology.

From Lenin and Stalin to Putin, Russia's economic development has relied on large scale technologies. These technologies--often called "hero projects," "projects of the century," or "megaprojects"--have been central to the nation's economic growth and military power. Despite their massive environmental and social costs, hero technologies moved ahead in service of the unbridled interests of state officials, the hubris of engineers, and the coalescence of the masses under a national ideology of glorious achievement and military grandeur.

In Hero Projects, Paul R. Josephson traces how, over the last one hundred years, the Russian tsars, commissars, and oligarchs embraced megaprojects to create the world's largest empire. Built by peasants, gulag prisoners, and Communist volunteers, the wide-ranging projects--including pipelines across the tundra, railroads from Europe to the Pacific Ocean, hydropower stations and canals from the northwest to arid Central Asia, and nuclear facilities--forever altered the landscape, politics, and society. As Josephson argues, if hero projects were embraced by the public as showcasing technological wonder, they have always ultimately served to enrich the Kremlin and demonstrate the nation's technological prowess on the global stage. And they continue to be a major feature of authoritarian Russian political rule in the twenty-first century; having rebuilt Russia's resource state and pushed a self-proclaimed "renaissance" of nuclear weapons and reactors, Putin has determined in 2022 to expand the empire to its Soviet borders by war on Ukraine, in Crimea, and against Georgia and Moldova.

Sweeping in scope, Hero Projects establishes the strong continuities in political culture in Russian history; reshapes the meaning of empire, extending it to include internal colonization; and expands environmental and social history through the study of big technology.