Peasants into Pilots: Soviet Air-Mindedness as an Ideology of Dominance

Of the many inventions and scientific discoveries that have shaped the course of the twentieth century, perhaps none has been more prominent than the technology of flight. Inspiring the creativity of the artistic imagination and attracting immense interest from the moment of its inception, machine-powered flight developed into an archetypal symbol of the modern age. Of course, the airplane is much more than a symbol. It is also a military weapon, an economic instrument, and a convenient method of transportation. In fulfilling these functions aviation has served as a practical device for states attempting to modernize in the course of the twentieth century. At the same time, as an index of technological proficiency and mastery over nature, aviation has signified the substantive progress made by humanity, assisting in the modernization of nations while conditioning and contributing to perceptions of the modern.

In the years that followed the First World War, the airplane's function as both an agent and symbol of modernization was perhaps nowhere more evident than in the Soviet Union. As part of their revolutionary quest to transform the Russian landscape, Communist Party officials embraced aviation as a crucial technological weapon in their battle against the nation's backwardness and inertia. ¹ Leon Trotskii, commissar of the Red Army and chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council, celebrated the airplane as "the great instrument of the future," and commissioned the party "to persistently and relentlessly introduce aviation into the daily life and practices of the nation." ² The party's commitment to aviation attained institutional status in the spring of 1923 with the creation of the Obshchestvo druzei vozdushnogo flota (Society of Friends of the Air Fleet), or ODVF. ³ A "voluntary" organization dedicated to the popularization of aeronautics and the creation of an air force, the ODVF provided the early administrative framework needed to build Soviet aviation. Testifying to the importance attributed to this task, the society's presidium included such prominent Bolshevik officials as Mikhail Frunze, Anatolii Lunacharskii, and Feliks Dzerzhinskii. In fulfillment of the party's mandate that the ODVF "establish and strengthen the military and civilian air fleet of the first proletarian republic," the society labored throughout the 1920s to raise the aeronautical consciousness of Soviet citizens. ⁴ Through the organization of aeronautical spectacles and lectures, the publication of air-minded literature, and the creation of local clubs and reading circles devoted to aeronautical subjects, party leaders undertook a campaign to popularize aviation while generating public support for the construction of an air fleet.

Aviation served the Communist Party's modernizing agenda in ways unmatched by other technologies. ⁵ The airplane's arrival bridged cultural and geographic divides, it disrupted long-held views of time and space, and it challenged faith in God and nature while offering citizens hope of economic and social progress. Aviation produced wonder and amazement even in the minds of sophisticated viewers, and it testified to the clear superiority of the city over the countryside. As the masters of this new technological marvel, Communist Party officials consciously worked to harness the Promethean impulses associated with flight, manipulating aviation to win public support for the construction of socialism. In literature and the arts, on film and in the press, Soviet leaders employed aeronautical imagery to combat the backwardness of the Russian countryside and to assert their authority across the nation's vast hinterlands.

In his award-winning monograph Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance, Michael Adas demonstrated the central role of technological symbolism in the formation of European identities. ⁶ Analyzing encounter narratives penned by travelers and explorers during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Adas argued that technological development and scientific progress were crucial markers in defining European notions of other peoples and cultures. Equating development with technical innovations such as telescopes, timepieces, railroads, and steamships, European observers constructed hierarchical value systems...