The GOELRO Plan Creators: Robert Eduardovich Klasson

Abstract

The 100th anniversary of the GOELRO Plan has spurred a growing interest in the topic and has become an information occasion for many publications of both scientific and popularization nature.

The GOELRO Plan’s study historiography has a vast space, which began to emerge in parallel with the implementation of the plan itself. The first publications date back to the 1920s and 1930s. Their authors were direct participants who considered the electrification matters in historical and practical aspects. At that time, a lot of publications of markedly propagandistic nature were issued.

In the late 1940s and 1950s, the GOELRO Plan attracted the attention of professional researchers. In the period from the second half of the 1950s to 1980s, generalizing papers of historians were prepared, in which the GOELRO Plan began to be considered not only based on an analysis of technical and economic characteristics, but also from the standpoint of political and social significance, with placing focus on the "party leadership" and Lenin's role in its development.

In the modern Russian historiography, an interest in the GOELRO Plan history has been retained, especially in regard of aspects that were inaccessible to Soviet researchers.

In the historiography of the last decade, a great deal of attention is paid to the human factor in the development and implementation of the GOELRO Plan in terms of "historical and anthropological turn in humanitarian thought". One of the debating matters is the GOELRO Plan "authorship", in which several conceptual approaches have emerged, and no unambiguous opinion has been formed. In our opinion, the research line related to the participation of the Russian engineering community members in the development and further implementation of the GOELRO Plan that is based on a personal-biographical approach should be considered among the promising ones.

The purpose of the article is to analyze the role of Robert Eduardovich Klasson (1868-1926) in the development and implementation of plans for electrification of pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary Russia, including the GOELRO Plan.

Klasson was one of the first electrical engineers in Russia. He initiated and implemented the construction of the Russia's first district power plant "Elektroperedacha". This plant operated on peat, which was a local cheap fuel, and an overhead power line was for the first time laid from this plan, which was capable of transmitting electricity over a distance of more than 70 kilometers.

Klasson's engineering activity can be viewed as a historical projection of the personal and professional factors in the fateful events of the Russian history. Klasson’s life is an example of civic responsibility to his people and the importance of the role of an engineer in the scientific and technical development of Russia.