Unintended community

Engineers were the largest occupational group in the Soviet Union and exemplified in many ways the success of the Soviet project. Engineers came, as a rule, from humble worker and peasant origins and rose through the systems of Soviet education and industrial workplace into positions of power, responsibility, and material well being that poised many of them to enter the Soviet ruling elite in the Communist Party and government. This dissertation describes the daily lives of Soviet engineers from the students' decision to enter technical study, to their experience in engineering universities and industrial workplaces, to the daily challenges of finding a place to live and taking care of one's parents and children, to joys and tribulations of getting a promotion or buying a car. These shared experiences, the dissertation argues, provided the basis for the formation of Soviet engineering identity and the emergence of Soviet engineers as a cohesive occupational group. This identity emerged independently of the regime's vision of a perfect Soviet engineer and flourished in the cracks of state policy, shaped most powerfully by the local, specific interactions and social dynamics of an engineering VUZ, a design bureau, and a production shop.