434 



1016 Walter A . McDougall 



priority of talent, funds, and materiel. Close political supervision, harmful in 

 other sectors, aided strategic technology by eliminating bottlenecks. Most of the 

 negative characteristics listed by Bailes did not apply to rocketry, while the 

 regime's poHtical need to demonstrate the military and technological superiority 

 of the Socialist Fatherland was a strong fillip. Given the native Russian talent, the 

 assist (though minor) provided by Helmut Grottrup's residual German team, 

 and the full support of a peacetime command economy, the Soviet leap into 

 space becomes less mysterious.'"* What still remains to be uncovered, however, is 

 the relationship between high-technology industries (many of which must be 

 integrated in rocketry) and the sophistication of an economy as a whole. The 

 debate over the role, or indeed the origin, of "leading sectors" in the English 

 Industrial Revolution, for instance, has implications for the origins of the Space 

 Age. 



The central problem of early space history lies in assessing the worldwide 

 impact oi Sputnik /.'^ The Soviets successfully tested an ICBM in August 1957, 

 but it was the subsequent launching of the first satellite on the shoulders of that 

 great rocket that upset the preconceptions of Americans, Europeans, and Third 

 World elites. How could the United States, on whose superiority Free World 

 strategies depended, have lost the race into space? The post-Sputnik panic, 

 sustained by a veritable "media riot," yielded two contradictory sets of explana- 

 tions. Senator Lyndon B. Johnson's Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on 

 Preparedness publicized specific explanations based on Republican mismanage- 

 ment: interservice rivalry, the antipathy to missiles of the "big bomber boys," and 

 Dwight David Eisenhower's stringent budget ceilings all contributed to the 

 Pentagon's "missile mess."'^ In the country at large, pundits, politicians, and 



'* See Bailes, Technology and Society under Lenin and Stalm. esp chaps. 8-9. Vladimirov, however, regarded the 

 space program as a Russian triumph achieved m spiteof the Communist rulers; The Rusiian Space Bluff, 164-74. 

 On science in the Soviet Union, also see D. Joravsky. Soviet MarxLim and Natural Science. 1917-1932 (New York, 

 1961); Loren R. Graham. The Soviet Academy of Sciences and the Communist Party. 1927-1932 (Princeton, 1967); 

 Mose L. Harvey et ai. Science and Technology as an Instrument of Soviet Policy (Miami, 1972); and Zhores 

 Medvedev, Soviet Science (New York, 1978). The importance of 1932 lay in the "Gleichschaltung" of the 

 Academy of Sciences by the Communist party and the end of independent organized research in the Soviet 

 Union. 



" On war as a stimulant to technological change, comparejohn U. Nef, War and Human Progress (C;ambridge, 

 Mass.. 1950), and Walt W. Rostow, "War and Economic Change: The British Experience," in his The Process of 

 Economic Growth (2d edn., Oxford, 1960). 144-67. Rostow has argued for a small impact of war on 

 industrialization. For important correctives, see Samuel E. Finer, "State- and Nation-Building in Europe: The 

 Role of the Military," in Charles Tilly, ed.. Tlie Formation of National Stales in Western Europe (Princeton, 1975), 

 84-163; and William H. McNeill, The Pursuit of Power: Technology. Armed Forces, and Societt since AO. 1001) (in ■ 

 press). On international rivalry and the rapid development of space technology, see William Schauer. The 

 Politics of Space: A Comparison of the Soviet and American Space Programs (New York, 1976); and Alain Dupas, l.a 

 Luttepour I'espace (Paris, 1977). The former is comprehensive but indifferently researched; the lattci co\ci s ilic 

 same ground but suflers from a contessed antisuperpower perspective. 



" The most thorough research to date is in Edmund Beard, Developing the ICBM: A Study in Bureaucratic 

 Politics (New York, 1976). Also see Michael H. Armacost. The Polilus of Weapons Innovation: The Thor-] iipiter 

 Controvert (New York, 1969); Edgar M. Bottome, The Missile Gap: A Study m the Formulation of Military and 

 PolUical Poluy (Cranberry, N.J., 1971), J. L. Chapman, AtUis: The Story of a Missile (New York, 1960); and 

 Herbert York, Ra^e to Oblivion: A Parttcipant\ View nj the Arms Race (New York, 1970). Contemporary critiques 

 from irate generals include James Gavin, War and Peace in the .Space Age (New York, 1958); John B. Mcdaris. 

 Countdown for Decision (New York, I960); and Maxwell Taylor, The Uncertain Trumpet (New York, 1959). 



