Soviet Archives - Collection of Government Documents on Workers

From the Collection of enactment and decrees of the government for 1921, Administration of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR

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On measures to raise the level of engineering and technical knowledge in the country and to improve the living conditions of engineering and technical workers R.S.F.S.R. ( Izv. No. 198, S. U. 62452 ).

Article No. 452.

Decree of the Council of Peopleʹs Commissars.

To achieve an early economic revival of the country through:

a)                   providing the country with a sufficient number of highly qualified engineering and technical workers of all specialties,

b)                  creating for them favorable legal, scientific and material conditions for work and existence and rapprochement in their practical and scientific activities with the working class,

c)                   the best use of their creative forces and initiative with the elimination of the practice of harmful combination of jobs and side activities that interfere with the main work of specialists, the Council of Peopleʹs Commissars decided:

Art. 1. To provide engineering and technical associations with a view to the best development and wide coverage of technical and economic‐organizational issues, all sorts of facilitations for the organization of meetings and conferences, to promote the publication of their printed organs and works and relations with scientific and technical organizations abroad through the organs of the Peopleʹs Commissariat of Education or The Supreme Council of the National Economy.

Art. 2. Encourage the creation of scientific and technical societies that are of a special scientific and technical nature and operate on the basis of special regulations approved by the Council of Peopleʹs Commissars at the suggestions of the Supreme Council of National Economy and the Peopleʹs Commissariat for Education.

Art. 3. To replenish and raise the level of the engineering and technical staff in the Republic through maximum development, along with the expansion of the network of schools of the Main Committee for Vocational and Technical Education, corresponding special basic, additional and repetitive courses for engineering specialists and technical workers with the use of scientific and technical forces among engineers and technicians, as well as involving engineering and technical forces from abroad.

The Supreme Council of the National Economy and the Main Committee for Vocational Education are entrusted with the implementation of Articles 1, 2 and 3 of this draft.

Art. 4. The All‐Russian Central Council of Trade Unions, together with the engineering sections and the Central Committees of the Production Unions, is instructed to really equalize the engineering and technical workers of the Trade Unions in all rights with the workers, members of the Trade Unions, and to promote the development of engineering and technical associations within the Trade Unions and at the inter‐union organizations both on the provincial and on the All‐Russian scale.

Art. 5. The All‐Russian Central Council of Trade Unions and the Labor Supply Commission are entrusted with the maximum possible increase in the level of cash and in‐kind payment on the basis of a living wage for engineering and technical workers of all specialties working in state enterprises and institutions and family members dependent on them.

Art. 6. The Peopleʹs Commissariat of Internal Affairs is instructed to provide engineering and technical workers of all specialties working in state enterprises and institutions with adequate living conditions with a disposition to use housing in workersʹ Houses of Commune, on an equal basis with manual workers and with the right to an additional room for household studies necessary according to their specialty.

Art. 7. The All‐Russian Central Council of Trade Unions is instructed to work out the issue of applying the above‐mentioned benefits to agronomists, doctors and other highly skilled practical workers within a month. Signed by:

Chairman of the Council of Peopleʹs Commissars V. Ulyanov (Lenin).

For the Administrator of the Council of Peopleʹs Commissars V.

Smolyaninov.

Secretary L. Fotieva .

August 25, 1921.

Published in No. 198 of Izvestia of the All‐Russian Central Executive

Committee of Soviets on September 7, 1921.