Factory Laboratories in the Trajectories of Soviet Science and Engineering Policy

The article examines the dynamics of the development of factory laboratories throughout the Soviet period from the point of view of the government’s demand for them and the specifics of the practical implementation of measures to stimulate their work during the years of industrialization, reforms on the path to “the fastest possible mastery of new technology” in the late 1950s and the 1960s, and the consolidation of organizational forms of science in the 1970s–1980s. In the context of competition between two lines – a combination of centralized government management (the idea of concentrating limited forces in a few but fairly large scientific institutions) and the desire to bring R&D closer to production (to decentralize them at enterprises) – the factory laboratory sometimes disappeared from the attention of science and industry leaders, and then again turned out to be at the center of discussions and practical events related to scientific and technical policy. Answering the key question about the change in the role and functions of factory laboratories, the author characterizes a number of related topics that influenced their work – the features of the daily production routine of factory laboratories, the specifics of their position at enterprises and relationships with workshops, the personnel structure and features of the daily work of factory engineering and technical workers. Thus, the study will draw attention to a wider range of issues of the science and engineering policy and industrial development of the USSR in their interrelation. The work is based on materials from the fonds of the Archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the State Archives of the Russian Federation and the Russian State Archives of Contemporary History. They are introduced into scientific discourse for the first time.