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Why should we consider the everyday life of ordinary citizens in their countless struggles to obtain basic consumer goods if the priorities of their leaders lay elsewhere? For years, specialists of the Soviet Union and the people's democracies neglected the history of everyday life and, like the so-called “totalitarian” school, focused on political history, seeking to grasp how power was wielded over a society that was considered immobile and subject to the state's authority. Furthermore, studies on the eastern part of Europe were dominated by political scientists who were interested in the geopolitics of the Cold War. The way the field was structured meant that little attention was paid to sociological and anthropological perspectives that sought to understand social interaction.

Larissa ZAKHAROVA* Concevoir l'ef cacité des communications enUnionsoviétique, ndesannées1920début des années 1930 Résumé. C e ta r t i c l ee x p l o r ec o m m e n tl e sé c o n o m i s t e se tl e si n g é n i e u r ss ' e m p l o i e n t àm e s u r e rl ' e f c a c i t éd e ss t r u c t u r e sd ec o m m u n i c a t i o n ss o v i é t i q u e sa uc o u r sd u premier plan quinquennal. Il montre que la quête de rationalité dans le secteur des c o m m u n i c a t i o n sas t i m u l éu n ep e n s é eé c o n o m i q u ef o n d é es u rl e sm é c a n i s m e sd u marché et révèle les incidences de ces ré exions économiques sur le développement des réseauxpostaux,téléphoniquesettélégraphiques.Larecherchederentabilitéàpartirde la mesure de la demande solvable et des tarifs ajustés aux prix de revient des services s ' esttoutefoisheurtéeauprojetdesociétéégalitairevis antàgarantir ,dansledomaine descommunications,unaccèsauxservicessansconditionderessources.Parl ' analyse d ur a p p o rta uc h i f fr e ,c ' e s ta i n s il el i e ne n tr es t a t i s t i q u e ,p o l i t i q u ee tp l an i c a t i o nq u i est examiné. Mots-clés. Unionsoviétique,communications,plani cation,économistes,ingénieurs. A b s t r a c t .D e s i g n i n gE f c i e n tC o m m u n i c a t i o n si nt h eS o v i e tU n i o n ,L a t e 1920s-Early 1930s T h i sa r t i c l ee x p l o r e sh o we c o n o m i s t sa n de n g i n e e r st r i e dt om e a s u r et h ee f c i e n c y o fS o v i e tc o m m u n i c a t i o ns y s t e m sd u r i n gt h e r s t v e-y e a rp l a n .I ts h o w st h a tt h e p u r s u i to fr a t i o n a l i t yi nt h ec o m m u n i c a t i o n ss e c t o rs t i m u l a t e de c o n o m i ct h i n k i n g basedonmark etmechanisms ,andre v ealstheconsequenceso fthiseconomicthought on the development of the postal, telephone and telegraph networks. The pursuit of p r o t a b i l i t yb ym e a s u ri n ge f f e c t i v ed e m an da n ds e t t i n gp ri c e sb a s e do nt h es e rv i c e s ' costvaluenonethelessrancountertotheprojectofanegali tariansocietywhich,inthe eldofcommunications,wouldguaranteeequalaccesstoservicesregardlessofusers ' nancialmeans.Byanalysingtheuseof gures,weexaminethelinkbetweenstatistics, politics and planning.

International audienceIn the Soviet Union, the development of electrical communication technologies was a concomitant of literacy acquisition. In this context, some technical devices, such as telephone, appeared to remain bound to the urban context of communication: for most of the Soviet time, telephone was mainly used in cities by literate subscribers. Under these circumstances telephone was destined to fluctuate between primary and secondary orality. To verify this hypothesis, I am analysing scenes from the Soviet films shot between 1930 and 1970 where phone conversations have been deliberately put at the forefront. Examining oral expressions used by protagonists during their conversations I try to answer the following questions: Since when was telephone filmed as a medium of secondary orality? What obstacles had prevented it from exemplifying secondary orality in Walter Ong’s terms? What social and cultural aspects of Soviet reality are highlighted in the scenes in which Soviet telephone occupies a centre stage