Overview of activities aimed at encouraging innovation and improvement by the scientific-technical societies of the Tatar ASSR in the late 1950s - early 1960s

The article focuses on the activities of the scientific-technical societies of the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR) in the second half of the 1950s - early 1960s in their efforts to enhance invention and innovation, and effectiveness of various forms of mobilization in the engineering and technical communities of factory workers. The author provides arguments in favor of the idea that the differentiated character of the structural transformations of scientific-technical societies, as well as the criteria for assessing the effectiveness of their activities, reflected the mobilization model of the Soviet economy. Realizing the mobilization functions that are not inherent in their nature and implementing speculative ideas (democratization of production), scientific-technical societies created far-fetched associations, such as worker-research institutes, public construction bureaus, public bureaus of economic analysis, and others. A key focal point is the analysis of the difficulties faced by scientific-technical associations. The most significant of which were the lack of: independence in planning the trajectory of its development, scientific personnel and effective connections with other scientific and engineering organizations. A large number of mobilization events generated the pursuit of quantity at the expense of quality. The article also discusses how the peculiarities of the command system, which was weakly susceptible to innovation and the growing discrepancy between political slogans and the realities of Soviet life, led to the profanation of the government's initiatives to develop creative activity of the working masses. In the USSR system of management of scientific and technical progress, immune to managerial influences coming from below, public organizations could not play a serious role, as a result implementing mobilization functions unusual for their nature.