On a Question of a Historiography of Electrification of the USSR 1920-1930 Years

Abstract

This article deals with an analysis of research literature focused on the electrification of the country in the 1920s - early 1930s and the main directions in the development of foreign and domestic historiography on the given subject. Most sources on the New Economic Policy (NEP) and industrialization do not mention the plans of comprehensive electrification of industry and agriculture. In this respect, the article analyzes the fundamental role of electrification in the country’s development. Despite the prevailing opinion in the literature that the high industrial potential of pre-revolutionary Russia was the critical factor in the electrification of the country, the article demonstrates the determining role of the executive corps. Because the entire array of issues related to the repressive politics of the government toward technical specialists and executives in the energy field has remained outside of the scientific analysis in Russian historiography, the article addresses questions concerning the mass use of prison labor during the construction of energy facilities and the search for participants in the subversive conspiracy at the energy enterprises in the early 1930s. The significance of the article consists in the fact that the challenges in the development of the energy complex in the USSR at the turn of the 1930s have emerged with new intensity in the contemporary energy sector of Russia.