According to my definitions, any society must combine “science,” “technology,” and “design” whenever it creates useful material objects. Science establishes principles which technology (with some admixture of common sense, and guidance from economics) embodies in physical components through manufacture. Design attends to the composition and arrangement of these components, as well as to the appearance and balance of qualities of the assembled product, with a view to satisfying consumers and other users. Given a conception of three essentially distinct elements, imports of advanced equipment by the USSR do not necessarily signify an inability to create original designs. The intention might rather be to put certain designs into production, using processes not offered by indigenous technology.

I am fully in agreement with Mr. Hutchings as to the major importance of design in determining the quality of an economy’s products. Indeed, I would extend this view to a statement that design is equally important in determining the appropriateness of specific methods of production in the light of the economy’s physical and human resources. I think that we are all indebted to Hutchings for making the case and for distinguishing between design and technology. However, while Hutchings discusses the contribution of design to various Soviet industries, he fails to provide criteria for distinguishing between good and bad product design. It is to this elementary task that I wish primarily to direct my remarks.

The study of Soviet design is an area where knowledge of science, technology, art, and history need to converge; a discussion of it, therefore, seems particularly appropriate for the pages of an interdisciplinary journal. The comments below are offered in the hopes of fostering further discussion across disciplines. In his article, Dr. Hutchings has gone beyond the conclusions of his book (Soviet Science, Technology, Design) to make some rather bold claims for the importance of studying Soviet design as a way of understanding major Soviet problems. He is to be commended for focusing attention on an area which has not received, at least until recently, much attention from Western scholars.

It is a professionally valuable experience to debate with such eminent critics. Although the focus here will be on our disagreements (because of space limitations some criticisms must go unanswered), I regard as chiefly significant our agreement that Soviet design is important, and has attracted too little attention.

David Granick’s essay, complementary to mine and unlike the others from a strictly economic standpoint, calls for little rejoinder. I would merely add that if (as I concur) much Soviet design has been “surprisingly” good, this may be partly attributable to a certain autonomy of indigenous design principles, which leads back to one theme of my work.

Throughout the post-World War II period, the prevailing paradigm of international politics among Western scholars has assumed that the major task confronting the decisionmakers of all states is achieving security in an anarchic state system. It follows from this assumption that relations between relatively equal superpowers constitute, in Arnold Wolfers's phrase, “the relationship of major tension” in the postwar world. In the 1970s, however, there has been a revival among Western scholars of an alternative perspective on world politics: the theory of economic imperialism, or, as it is usually labeled in the 1970s, “dependency theory.” It is a perspective which focuses on unequal relations between states. In that perspective, “the basic model of international politics [is] the imperialist system that was centered upon states of unequal economic development,“ where “the relationship of major tension was between the developed and underdeveloped economies.“

Modern European historiography was nurtured in the school of Humanism, that attitude of mind, so characteristic of the Renaissance, which broke through the ecclesiastical “fixation” of medieval thought by a renewed appreciation of man and his role in this world. It accomplished this in part by reviving interest in the pagan culture of ancient Greece and Rome. Humanist men of letters looked to the literary and historical works of classical antiquity for their models of outlook and expression, and in these they found both a liberation from medieval modes and a new bondage. Humanism was also cosmopolitan: Humanist poets, scholars, and artists belonged to a Pan-European republic of arts and sciences with an official language of its own—a revived classical Latin. They traveled and mixed freely and lived in each others’ countries.

Perhaps the most famous anecdote of the many connected with the reign of Tsar Nicholas I concerns the way in which he supposedly determined the route of the St. Petersburg-Moscow Railway. When asked by his officials the route along which it should be built, the tsar, on the spur of the moment, it is claimed, took a ruler, laid it on a map, and arbitrarily and hastily drew an absolutely straight line between the two capitals. The all-powerful despot had spoken, and his decision was carried out by his servile courtiers, regardless of consequences.

Americans have paid relatively little attention to the history of higher education in the United States, and Russian specialists have neglected the history of their own field, even though our foundations strongly affect our qualities as scholarteachers and the circumstances in which we work. One of the most important founding fathers of Russian studies in the United States was Archibald Cary Coolidge, a member of the Department of History at Harvard University from 1893 until his death in 1928, who launched teaching and research concerning Russia and Eastern Europe at Harvard and in many other colleges and universities through those whom he helped train.