Inžinieriai pagal planą. Techninis mokymas ir specialistų rengimas Lietuvoje 1944-1990 metais

• Grybkauskas, Saulius
• Grišinaitė, Rūta

LTKnygoje tyrinėjamas inžinierių sluoksnio formavimasis sovietinėje Lietuvoje 1944-1990 metais. Sovietmečiu inžinieriai sudarė didžiausią aukštąjį išsilavinimą turinčių specialistų grupę. Lietuvių tapsmas inžinieriais pretendavo į tikrą sėkmės istoriją, unikalią visos SSRS kontekste. Lietuvių sodiečių vaikai įgijo ir įvaldė iki tol respublikai mažai žinomas technines profesijas ir ėmė dominuoti tarp inžinierių. Jokioje kitoje sovietinėje respublikoje mes nerasime taip etniškai monolitiško techninės inteligentijos sluoksnio. Nors Maskva iš dalies rėmė vietinių kadrų kėlimą į vadovaujamuosius postus ir respublikų liaudiškas kultūras, kas turėjo pelnyti žmonių simpatijas ir paramą režimui, šiai nacionalinei politikai iššūkį metė sovietinio ūkio plėtros tikslai, industrializacija, kuri grasino pakeisti gyventojų etninę sudėtį, internacionalizuoti kultūrą. Atrodytų, kad inžinieriai, kurie buvo svarbiausi ūkio ir techninės plėtros agentai, ir turėjo tapti tais internacionalizmo nešėjais. Tačiau Lietuvoje, skirtingai nei kaimyninėje Latvijoje ir kitose respublikose, to neįvyko.

ENIn the broader sense, university and higher education studies can be viewed as a field affected by the rationality and modernity of the Age of Enlightenment on the one hand, and by nationalism/internationalism on the other, with the resulting tension facilitating the ability to climb over the threshold of occupation by foreign powers and the ensuing changes to political systems. In an extraordinary way, the duel between the rationalism and modernity of the epoch and the continuation of nationalism from the inter-war period coupled with internationalism, which was being implemented so intensively, formed a unique link between these two opposites that became institutionalised in the functioning of higher education schools. By utilising the rhetoric of progress and mandatory advancement, or conversely, by harnessng the provisions of "Leninist national policy" and ideologemes arising from national content, higher education studies and the training of specialists managed to bridge the divides created by different political systems, thereby bringing mental shards from the inter-war period into the socialist times where a new Soviet national policy was being pieced together, and likewise when Lithuania’s independence was reinstated, where vestiges of the Soviet period migrated into our present days. The flexibility and ability to adapt to changing political conditions that became ingrained in higher education institutions, by making full use of personal connections with the government, determined a relative sense of autonomy among these institutions, alas, expressed less as academic freedom but rather as the phenomenon of "local heads" and institutional insularity.If in the Soviet period this could have been considered a kind of positive phenomenon, allowing them to withstand the initiatives coming down in full force from Moscow, then with the reinstatement of independence, the administrative autonomy of higher education institutions and the goal to retain it posed certain difficulties, making reforms hard to push through. Even though the concept of the science and technology revolution was quite legitimate in the USSR, its application spanned only the fields of technical inventions and implementation of innovations, whereas in terms of social structures it was limited exclusively to the critique of the capitalist system. At the time when discussions about the impact of technology on changing society were going on in the West and scientific disciplines were being established to research these impacts, in the USSR this academic discourse was reduced to arguments on the importance of the pure sciences and engineering, and an artistic and cultural education for the modern person. This was a public discussion on a union-wide scale that found resonance in the Soviet republics. In Lithuania, under the conditions of occupation, it was combined with the sentimental loss of statehood, philosphers’ and educologists’ critical musings on the genetically intolerable, foreign, forcibly imposed industrialisation that were nonetheless outlined in guidelines for future activity. This conservationist position during the Sąjūdis national revival movement and independence reinstatement period became a part of the political program, eventually entrenching in society the image of technicism as the opposite of a civil-orientation and humanism. Technical training comprised a very important part of a Soviet education in the Soviet education system. It encompassed the different spaces of a child’s daily life from his schooling to his leisure time.One of the fundamental values that was meant to be instilled in the education process was the idea of progress as being a guarantee for a better socialist future. Being guided by this kind of understanding, the child was meant to come to the realisation that technological inventions, industrialisation and the modernisation of agriculture were the only right and necessary ways of ensuring the states development. The early familiarisation of children with technological processes also shows the Soviet education system’s huge ambitions to raise a technologicallysawy new generation at any cost. These kinds of ambitions again demonstrate that childrens’ leisure time was also used as a platform to entice them to not only take an interest in technical innovations but to also become actively involved in their creation. [...].