The rise of engineers in Russia

Abstract

Alfred J. Rieber, The rise of engineers in Russia. The Russian engineering profession owes much of its professional ethos and ideology to the tradition of les grandes écoles as transmitted by French engineers imbued with St. Simonian ideals who staffed the Institute of Transportation Engineers in the early nineteenth century. Until then, Peter I's vision of a technological society had encountered resistance of the nobility to technical education, competing demands of the army for engineers and changing economic policies of the state. By the mid-nineteenth century Russian engineers controlled the Ministry of Transportation and firmly established a statist policy of economic development.

Knowledge Transaction and State Making from Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic

“…Official archival documents from this period show that these experts were mostly recruited from Western Europe. This phenomenon is not an Ottoman specificity as studies on other cases such as Russia (Rieber 1990), Japan (Beauchamp, Iriye 1990), Greece (Vacalopoulos 2008), Egypt (Mitchell 1988; or colonial administrations (Hodge 2007;Tilley 2011;Sibeud et al 2013) point out. This literature indicates in fact the worldwide circulation of Western experts during the 19 th century which contributed to the "new imperialism" (Buchanan 1986), a relationship that was formalised in more institutional forms during the interwar period (Bourmaud et al 2020;Rosenberg 1987).…”

Cracks in the Granite

“…Engineers sent to Russia by agreement with France after 1807 brought engineering principles based in the Enlightenment. 66 Engineers offered St. Petersburg what Mark Cioc called an "ideal" river. In Cioc's definition, the perfect river is really a canal, a waterway that is easily controlled and does not flood.…”

Experimentalists in the Republic of Letters

“…For M. H. Jacobi's career in Russia, see Bocharova 1959, 44-63;Yarotskiy 1988, 1-107;Wild 1876;Lindner 1985, 91-99;Hempel 1999, 165-257. For the role of engineering in Russia, see Rieber 1990; on the changing science in Russia, see Vucinich 1963. 37 For impressions of the good working conditions of professors in Russia, see the private correspondence M. H. Jacobi to C. G. J. Jacobi, 10-22 August 1837 or H. W. Dove to M. H. Jacobi from 8 April 1841, in Ahrens,45,83,n.…”