The Sharashka as a paradigm of technical innovation and development.

[sunday]

There is a novel by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn titled In the First Circle, inspired by his work as engineer in a Sharashka, a kind of Soviet jail for scientists and engineers ordered to work in new devices for the State or the armed forces of the Paradise of the Proletariat. Famous Soviet researchers were incarcerated in that way, even if they had not done anything "wrong".

From the wikipedia article:

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Sharashkas (singular: Russian: шара́шка, [ʂɐˈraʂkə]; sometimes sharaga, sharazhka) were secret research and development laboratories operating from 1930 to the 1950s within the Soviet Gulag labor camp system, as well as in other facilities under the supervision of the Soviet secret service. Formally various secret R&D facilities were called "special design bureau" Russian: особое конструкторское бюро, ОКБ and similar terms. Etymologically, the word sharashka derives from a Russian slang expression sharashkina kontora, ("Sharashka's office"), an ironic, derogatory term to denote a poorly-organized, impromptu, or bluffing organization, which in its turn comes from the criminal argot term sharaga (шарага) for a band of thieves, hoodlums, etc.[1])

The scientists and engineers at a sharashka were prisoners picked by the Soviet government from various camps and prisons and assigned to work on scientific and technological problems. Living conditions were usually much better than in an average taiga camp, mostly because of the absence of hard labor.

There is a list of notable Sharashka inmates:

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Robert Ludvigovich Bartini (or Roberto Oros di Bartini) an aircraft designer and scientist.
Valentin Glushko, a chief rocket engine designer. (His biography at MN)
Leonid Kerber, an aircraft radio equipment designer.
Yuri Kondratyuk, a pioneer of astronautics and spaceflight, the inventor of the gravitational slingshot.
Lev Kopelev, a writer, another inmate of Marfino (a prototype for Rubin from In the First Circle)
Sergei Korolev, an aircraft and rocket designer, later the chief designer for the Soviet space program.
Vladimir Myasishchev, an aircraft designer.
Vladimir Petlyakov, the chief designer of the aircraft families Pe and VI (The Petlyakov aircraft).
Nikolai Nikolaevich Polikarpov, an aircraft designer (arrested for a brief period).
Leonid Ramzin, the inventor of the straight-flow boiler
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a writer. His novel In the First Circle is a vivid account of life in sharashka Marfino.
Léon Theremin, a pioneer of electronic music, the inventor of the theremin and a passive eavesdropping device.
Nikolay Timofeev-Ressovsky, a geneticist and radiobiologist (His biography at genetics.org).
Andrei Tupolev, the chief designer of the aircraft families Tu and ANT.

I like the book when I read it while I was at University, as it showed some kind of engineers working environment, and also the pressures they were experiencing, but I did not think that was good for productivity.

Now, I found a review/comment of a book on the work at the China Lake US Navy laboratory when they were developing the AIM-9 Sidewinder missile, a widget with a number of really innovative, out-of-the-box solutions, like the rollerons. This is the book at some online store. The boss of that outfit at the time was one William McClean, a Lockheed's Kelly-Johnson-like character.

It looks like the working environment, jail regime excepted, was quite similar to the one in Marfino, the sharashka where Solzhenitsyn was imprisoned for a time.

The comment elaborates on the need to keep the theoreticians/nerds at bay, and wonders if that is one of the things that are wrong with modern military procurement/development.

[Ivanhoe]

American aerospace started going downhill when middle management transitioned from engineers to suits.*

What that review describes is what I call the "war room" concept, which in engineering terms used to mean grabbing ownership of a conference room with lots of chalkboards/whiteboards for technical staff to brainstorm etc. Key factor is getting them away from MWA (Managers Walking Around) and the damned telephone. Janitorial staff must be instructed to never clean the boards, on pain of torture and death. Another key factor is insulating technical staff from all-hands meetings, HR training, etc. The startup garage thing is a type of war room.

Note that these days, it is far more difficult for technical staff to work round-the-clock due to two-income households, child care, etc.

I recall reading a Vietnam memoir by some Navy SEAL, who talked about the belt-fed Stoner guns. They were apparently dialoguing directly with folks at China Lake who would take feedback and ship new parts direct to the theater.

* Of course, "suits" is metaphorical, as technical staff routinely wore suits in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. The 70s were when commonplace wear of suits diminished. When professional managers were the only ones wearing suits, organizational effectiveness went downhill. Wasn't the clothing, it was the culture and mindset.

 

 

[sunday]

On top of that, the KC-45 fiasco could have taught CEOs that lawyers could be more important that engineers to win a public contract. On top of that, a related scandal (KC-X) caused by a CFO coming from McDonnell-Douglas, Sears, caused the resignation of Boeing engineer and CEO Condit. That links with the Boeing thing being discussed in the Because America thread.

If middle management meddling is bad, imagine lawyering meddling.

Edited May 7, 2024 by sunday

[Stuart Galbraith]

Compare and contrast with Kelly Johnsons skunk works, whre he removed the structure between the guys designing and the guys building. Sure, there was security, but it didnt get in the way of practical ideas exchange.

Not that I think there is a perfect system. There are certainly a lot of bad ones.

[Ivanhoe]

5 hours ago, sunday said:

On top of that, the KC-45 fiasco could have taught CEOs that lawyers could be more important that engineers to win a public contract. On top of that, a related scandal (KC-X) caused by a CFO coming from McDonnell-Douglas, Sears, caused the resignation of Boeing engineer and CEO Condit. That links with the Boeing thing being discussed in the Because America thread.

If middle management meddling is bad, imagine lawyering meddling.

And lobbyists. And most importantly, bought-and-paid-for legislators and high-level bureaucrats.

[Ivanhoe]

5 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Compare and contrast with Kelly Johnsons skunk works, whre he removed the structure between the guys designing and the guys building. Sure, there was security, but it didnt get in the way of practical ideas exchange.

Not that I think there is a perfect system. There are certainly a lot of bad ones.

There is no perfect system. Many systems can be made to work, if-and-only-if staffed properly. There is probably a Law out there somewhere that predicts the effectiveness of an organization with some personnel ratio. Say, if more than 33% of middle and upper management are incompetent and/or immoral, failure is inevitable.

 

[Ivanhoe]

If you're not familiar with the BCG model, it might be worth perusing;

https://www.toolshero.com/marketing/bcg-matrix/

Boeing seems to be managing as if its in Harvest phase and heading rapidly towards Divest phase.

[sunday]

12 hours ago, Ivanhoe said:

There is no perfect system. Many systems can be made to work, if-and-only-if staffed properly. There is probably a Law out there somewhere that predicts the effectiveness of an organization with some personnel ratio. Say, if more than 33% of middle and upper management are incompetent and/or immoral, failure is inevitable.

 

Problem with human beings is that they are not perfect, thus a system should be devised to work with imperfect people. The most common way to deal with imperfection on technical issues is to increase the managers ratio, as the pursuing of excellent people is expensive, and needs excellence in the places that take decisions, IMHO.

3 hours ago, Ivanhoe said:

If you're not familiar with the BCG model, it might be worth perusing;

https://www.toolshero.com/marketing/bcg-matrix/

Boeing seems to be managing as if its in Harvest phase and heading rapidly towards Divest phase.

Definitively not good, but perhaps they have hounded out the people capable to build star products.

[DB]

I suspect that any system will be gamed by people to whatever advantage they believe suits them best. I consider this to be a generalisation of Pournelle's Law, and I think it also overlaps with Goodhart's law, too.

[Roman Alymov]

Have to note here that most of Solzhenitsyn literature was actually false, based on tales he heared from other people (that is why he was in uneasy relatioins with another "prison camp stories" writer Varlaam Shalamov, who have experienced a lot of hardships he was writing about personally). But he, as trained mathematician, was in fact for some time working in different Sharashkas, even writing his books there - meaning conditions there were relatively soft (quite logically, as people in charge of this institutions were PERSONALLY responcible for achieving measurable results, mostly in hitech/defence field, not some ideological gains be it "promotion of Lenin's ideals" or "ensuring gender equality").

[sunday]

Seems Shalamov was in bad terms with good ol' Aleksandr, for reasons. Shalamov also recanted some of his works in his later life.

Solzhenitsyn also wrote fiction, like his Ivan Denisovich. Anyway Solzhenitsyn works is a matter in which we do not agree, @Roman Alymov.

[bojan]

Karlo/Karl Stajner/Steiner, who has spent quite a bit of time in gulag (his book was named "7000 days in Sibiria") also considered Solzhenitsyn works (those were published in Yugoslavia) to be "...mostly collections of prison stories, half-truths and outright fairy-tales. Reality was much worse."

Edited May 11, 2024 by bojan

[sunday]

Both Shalamov and Steiner were Communist activists that were arrested during the great purge. Solzhenitsyn was arrested post WWII. That could have made a difference.

[Stuart Galbraith]

I dont recall having read anything in Gulag Archipeligo (or at least as much of it as I could bear to read) with the claim it ALL of happened to him. Its chock full of stories that he attributed to other people that he heard. its not like Papillon, where he attributes all the events to himself, when very clearly its a colleciton of stories he heard from other inmates.

For archipelligo to be false, it would have to be untrue, which it wasnt.

[bojan]

1 minute ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

...For archipelligo to be false, it would have to be untrue, which it wasnt.

None, including Steiner claimed it was false. But it is not a historical document either.

[Ivanhoe]

Not being a self-appointed literary intellectual, I've always been skeptical of the fanfare GA gets. Its a novel, not a factchecked memoir. Despite that, people treat it as presenting a Greater Truth.

A similar annoyance is Lord of the Flies. Praised as illustrating the dark side of humanity, the one time in reality boys got stranded on a Pacific island, they behaved far better than the average schoolboys of the time.

However, I take the Batman comics of the 1960s as Gospel Truth, because obviously.

 

 

 

[Roman Alymov]

8 hours ago, sunday said:

Both Shalamov and Steiner were Communist activists that were arrested during the great purge. Solzhenitsyn was arrested post WWII. That could have made a difference.

Solzhenitsyn was arrested during WWII (in Feb 1945). 

[sunday]

5 minutes ago, Roman Alymov said:

Solzhenitsyn was arrested during WWII (in Feb 1945). 

Ok, a few months before the end of WWII.

Still, the others were real Communists and were arrested (one for the second time) during the Great Purge.

[Roman Alymov]

1 hour ago, Ivanhoe said:

Not being a self-appointed literary intellectual, I've always been skeptical of the fanfare GA gets. Its a novel, not a factchecked memoir. Despite that, people treat it as presenting a Greater Truth.

Actually, the right question to ask is why Solzhenitsyn got the fanfare while other writers who were describing their prison experience have not. And as for me the answer is following: 

    In his initial works where he was describing mostly his personal experience of "small man" and things he was able to observe personally (for example, village life) and for that works he was initially highly valued both by prominent Soviet writers like Tvardovsky and other former prisoners like Shalamov

    From Shalamov's letter to Solzhenitsyn dated 1962

"A story ("One day of Ivan Denisovich" - RA) is like poetry — everything in it is perfect, everything is expedient. Every line, every scene, every characterization is so concise, clever, subtle and deep that I think that from the very beginning of its existence, the "New World" <magazine> has not printed anything so solid, so strong"

  But one have to remember that initial publication of Solzhenitsin's novels was personally pressed through bureoucracy by no lesse person then Khruschev, with obvious aim of reducing political leverage of his political opponents who were associated with Stalin's era (of course Khruschev himself was to great deal creation of this era, so he was in need to distance himself from this heritage). Quite predictably, all possible Soviet literature benefits rained on Splzhenitsyn (including nomination Lenin's prize in 1963).  No doubt Solzhenutsyn got wind of it and was eager to make his works more political - rising from small men stories to wide political implications. 

    As result (and as meanwhile Khruschev was not exactly making well politically) he was increasingly becoming not welcome by both official litreture circles and people like Shalamov* who wrote in 1971 

"Solzhenitsyn's activity is the activity of a businessman, aimed narrowly at personal success with all the provocative accessories of such activity"

    But at the same time, quite logically, he was increasingly promoted by West.....

* Note at some point Solzheniutsyn was trying to ger Shalamov to be co-author of "Archipelag GULAG", but as far as i understand proposal was turned down.

 

[Roman Alymov]

54 minutes ago, sunday said:

Ok, a few months before the end of WWII.

Still, the others were real Communists and were arrested (one for the second time) during the Great Purge.

Solzhenitsyn was also hardcore Leninist (actually, he was arrested for criticizing Stalin for not following Lenin's principles and planning to create clandestine organisation to re-create this principles).

    From Roy Medvedev: ""His young orthodox Marxism did not stand the test of the <prison> camp, making him an anti-communist. One cannot justify oneself and one's instability by denigrating the "communists in the camps", portraying them as diehard orthodoxers or traitors, while distorting the truth. It is unworthy of a Christian, as Solzhenitsyn considers himself, to gloat and sneer at the Bolsheviks who were shot in 1937-1938, considering this as retribution for the "red terror". And it is absolutely unacceptable to layer a book with an "insignificant in number, but impressive in composition element of tendentious untruth""

[sunday]

Still not an activist of the first hour.

I kind of could not disagree with the old anti-Fascist, and anti-Communist Italian journalist Indro Montanelli, who used to have a bust of Stalin in his office. When surprised visitors asked him why he had a effigy of the Russian dictator, Montanelli used to say "Stalin was a great man. No one has killed so many Communists!".

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Sulla sua scrivania di direttore del Giornale, Indro Montanelli teneva un piccolo busto in ghisa - made in Urss - di Stalin. A coloro che un po stupiti gliene chiedevano la ragione, Indro rispondeva: un uomo ammirevole, ha ucciso più comunisti lui che chiunque altro.

It is likely the Great Purge was the one massacre inspired by Stalin with the least number of truly guiltless people executed.