Formation of the First School of Electric Machine Engineers in the Ukrainian SSR (the 1920s)

Abstract

The development of electrical engineering in the Ukrainian SSR against the background of implementing electrification since the second half of the 1920s began in the absence of both specialized engineers and their training system. But, by the 1930s the Republic managed to create its own school of electric machine engineers, the primacy leadership in which was not finally determined by researchers and was ascribed either to Kharkiv Technological Institute (KhTI) or to Kharkiv Electromechanical Plant (KhEMZ). However, the scientific works in which such allegations were made were territorially limited to Kharkiv region. This did not exclude the possibility of establishing a different course of real historical events in the expansion of the territorial boundaries of purposeful research. Thus, the controversial and fragmentary coverage in the historiography of the establishing of the first school of electric machine engineers in the Ukrainian SSR made its clarification relevant for research on the history of Ukraine within the selected chronological boundaries.

However, in addition to the purely historical aspect, the relevance of the theme is determined by the possibility of studying the experience gained in the organization of rapid training of engineers for knowledge-intensive industries in conditions of the urgent need for them, and with the lack of current experience of such work. In this context, the results of the study acquire extrapolation features, and this makes them useful in conditions similar to studied. Thus, the goal of this study is to determine the regional and professional formats of the first Ukrainian school of electric machine engineers and the reasons that led to their formation. As a result of studying the issue, it is concluded that the first school of engineers of electric machines in the Ukrainian SSR was organized in 1930 in the VTNZ (Technical Institutions of Higher Education) at KhEMZ. The reasons for organizing the studied school in Kharkiv were both in the crisis of the industry in the early 1920s and the measures taken by the USSR government to overcome the crisis territory after territory, with the additional implementation of the industrial production concentration policy in general. As a result, the regional electric machine-building facilities inherited for Ukrainian SSR from the Russian Empire lost their perspective and, accordingly, the need for engineering staff. KhEMZ, as the most powerful profile plant in the USSR, fully complied with the government's concept of industrial development, and that fact determined its further progress and, consequently, the growth of regional needs for engineers. The main reason for the organization of systematic training of electric machines engineers at the industrial enterprise was the practice of direct borrowing of appropriate construction schemes from leading foreign manufacturers introduced in the second half of the 1920s. As a result of the application of this variant of scientific support, Ukrainian manufacturers had gained priority access to modern design construction methods, which allowed them to speed up the process of proper personnel training significantly. The process became even faster when the students themselves were involved in the performing of mentioned borrowings, which, against the background of the urgency of the problem with engineering staff, played a key role in the organization of the appropriate school directly at the enterprise.