Overview

"From Lenin and Stalin to Putin, Russia's economic development has relied on large scale technologies. These technologies--often called ""hero projects,"" ""projects of the century,"" or ""megaprojects""--have been central to the nation's economic growth and military power. Despite their massive environmental and social costs, hero technologies moved ahead in service of the unbridled interests of state officials, the hubris of engineers, and the coalescence of the masses under a national ideology of glorious achievement and military grandeur. In Hero Projects, Paul R. Josephson traces how, over the last one hundred years, the Russian tsars, commissars, and oligarchs embraced megaprojects to create the world's largest empire. Built by peasants, gulag prisoners, and Communist volunteers, the wide-ranging projects--including pipelines across the tundra, railroads from Europe to the Pacific Ocean, hydropower stations and canals from the northwest to arid Central Asia, and nuclear facilities--forever altered the landscape, politics, and society. As Josephson argues, if hero projects were embraced by the public as showcasing technological wonder, they have always ultimately served to enrich the Kremlin and demonstrate the nation's technological prowess on the global stage. And they continue to be a major feature of authoritarian Russian political rule in the twenty-first century; having rebuilt Russia's resource state and pushed a self-proclaimed ""renaissance"" of nuclear weapons and reactors, Putin has determined in 2022 to expand the empire to its Soviet borders by war on Ukraine, in Crimea, and against Georgia and Moldova. Sweeping in scope, Hero Projects establishes the strong continuities in political culture in Russian history; reshapes the meaning of empire, extending it to include internal colonization; and expands environmental and social history through the study of big technology."

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9780197698396

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Reviews

"Paul R. Josephson is the doyen of the Soviet history of technology and science. His groundbreaking studies have consistently provided powerful inspiration and important landmarks for younger researchers all over the world. In Hero Projects, Josephson proves the significance of profound historical research in coming at an appropriate understanding of Putinism. Moscow's Kremlin bosses are obviously so driven by the imperial demons of the twentieth century that the realities of the twenty-first century remain incomprehensible to them. After reading this book, it's clear that the history of the Soviet Union may be over, but it is far from being overcome. * Klaus Gestwa, Director of the Institute for Eastern European History and Regional Studies, Eberhard Karl University of T""ubingen *"

Paul R. Josephson is the doyen of the Soviet history of technology and science. His groundbreaking studies have consistently provided powerful inspiration and important landmarks for younger researchers all over the world. In Hero Projects, Josephson proves the significance of profound historical research in coming at an appropriate understanding of Putinism. Moscow's Kremlin bosses are obviously so driven by the imperial demons of the twentieth century that the realities of the twenty-first century remain incomprehensible to them. After reading this book, it's clear that the history of the Soviet Union may be over, but it is far from being overcome. * Klaus Gestwa, Director of the Institute for Eastern European History and Regional Studies, Eberhard Karl University of Tübingen *

Author Information

Paul R. Josephson is Professor Emeritus of History at Colby College. He is a specialist on the history of big science and technology in the twentieth century. The author of fourteen books, he focuses on environmental and political questions, and on the comparative history of Russia and the US. His most recent book, Nuclear Russia: The Atom in Russian Politics and Culture, is a cultural history of the nuclear age in Russia.

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