Encyclopedia of Russian History

The process of the de-Stalinization of the Academy began soon after Stalin’s death in 1953. By the mid-1960s, there was no science in the outside world that was not recognized and closely followed in the Soviet Union. The Academy played the leading role in reestablishing sociology and the rich national tradition in social psychology dominated by the internationally recognized legacy of Lev Se-menovich Vygotsky. At the same time, Marxist philosophers were encouraged to explore paths to a reconciliation with leading Western philosophies of science and to search for “the kernels of truth” in “bourgeois” thought.

In the meantime, the Academy continued to grow at a rapid pace. In 1957 it established a string of research institutes in Novosibirsk-known as the Siberian Department or Akademgorodok (Academic Campus)-concentrating, among other activities, on the branches of mathematics related to the ongoing computer revolution, the latest developments in molecular biology, and the new methodological requirements of the social sciences, particularly economics. In 1971 the Department had fourty-four research institutes, fifty laboratories, and a research staff of 5,600. It also supported a new university known for its high academic standards. A new complex of research institutes in nuclear physics was established in Dubna, and another group of institutes engaged in physico-chemical approaches to biological studies was built in Pushkino. A scientific center engaged in geophysical studies was established in 1964 in Krasnaya Pakhta. The scientific center in Noginsk concentrated on physical chemistry. The Academy also helped in guiding and coordinating the work of the Union-Republican academies.

In 1974 the Academy had 237 full members and 439 corresponding members. In the same year the professional staff of the Academy numbered 39,354, including 29,726 with higher academic degrees. The Academy published 132 journals, a few intended to reach the general reading public. It continued the tradition of publishing collections of essays celebrating important events in national history or commemorating major contributors to science. One of the last and most memorable collections, published in 1979, marked the centennial of Einstein’s birth.

The Academy produced voluminous literature on its own history. The Soviet period of the Acad7

ADMINISTRATION FOR ORGANIZED RECRUITMENT

emy was presented in a glowing light with no place for a critical analysis of the underlying philosophy and internal organization of this gigantic institution. In 1991, with the dismemberment of the Soviet union, the name of the Russian Academy of Sciences was again made official. The new Academy brought an end to the monopoly of a single philosophy of science. See also: CENSORSHIP; COMMUNIST ACADEMY; SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY; UNIVERSITIES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Graham, Loren R. (1967). The Soviet Academy of Sciences and the Communist Party. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Vucinich, Alexander. (1984). Empire of Knowledge. Berkeley: University of California Press. Vucinich, Alexander. (1963-1970). Science in Russian Culture. 2 vols. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

ALEXANDER VUCINICH

ADMINISTRATION FOR ORGANIZED RECRUITMENT

The Administration for Organized Recruitment (Russian acronym, Orgnabor) was a labor recruitment agency that existed in the USSR from 1931. Its essential feature was that the recruiting organization, not the potential employee, initiated the recruitment process. In the 1930s it was mainly concerned with the recruitment of peasants for seasonal and permanent work in nonagricultural jobs.

During the New Economic Policy (NEP) the USSR had high unemployment, and relied on labor exchanges to bring supply and demand for labor into balance. It also had substantial numbers of peasants migrating to the towns in search of work, and substantial numbers of these peasants found seasonal employment away from their villages. With the abolition of unemployment in 1930, it was thought that there would be no further need for market economy instruments such as labor exchanges.

Given the huge demand for labor in industry and construction, and the collectivization of agriculture, it nonetheless became necessary to establish a procedure for recruiting peasants from collective farms. Hence the creation, in 1931, of a new type of recruitment for the rapidly growing construction and industrial sectors: organized recruitment. In this new system, state-owned enterprises or administrative organizations such as the People’s Commissariats recruited a number of workers for regular or seasonal work by entering into an agreement with a collective farm, group of collective farms, or rural area.