Scientific support for the production of electrical machines at the Kharkov Electromechanical Plant: a critique of historiography

Abstract

This study is part of a more general work on determining the system for organizing the scientific support for the production of electric machines at the Kharkov Electromechanical Plant (KhEMP) in the interwar period 1919–1940. The study carried out on the basis of methods of historiographical and source study analyzes in order to ascertain the completeness and reliability of the information contained in the relevant historiographical material. The study of historiography has shown that the facts presented in it of the formation of the scientific component of the scientific and technical potential of KhEMP are reliable. However, with this completely ignores the fact of participation in the scientific support of the activities of the KhEMP of foreign electrical companies. Although according to the documentary assessments of the factory specialists of that time, the scientific and technical cooperation of the company with foreign firms played a key role in this process. Also, unlike the archival sources of information, the historiographic material does not contain any mention of the advanced rates of development of military research at the KHEMP in the period under review. And this directly influenced the order of organization of the system of its scientific support through the established intensive cooperation with military research organizations. Moreover, the scientific and technical subdivisions of KhEMP, which are engaged in defense-related subjects, themselves became the research and development structures of the military-industrial complex of the USSR, while gaining access to the existing state-wide system of the scientific support of such organizations. In addition, given the requirements for the technical level, quality and reliability of military products, the degree of novelty and complexity of research and development work carried out at the plant objectively could not be inferior to similar criteria set for civilian work during the period under review. Thus, the necessary information in each of the analyzed scientific works turned out to be incomplete, which, when generalized, led to biased conclusions regarding the question of interest to us. The scientific and technical self-sufficiency of KhEMP, as well as the role of the Kharkov Technological (later – Kharkov Electrotechnical) Institute in organizing the system of scientific support of the plant, received certain exaggerations, and other ways of resolving this issue were not considered at all. This reason does not allow us to apply the corresponding conclusions obtained by historiography in the study of the scientific support for the production of electric machines at the KhEMZ in 1919–1940s, although it does not prevent us from using the reliable facts given in her