“A winged miracle”: the perception of the airplane as a technological achievement in Soviet society in the 1920s-1930s

The aim of the study is to identify the trends prevailing in the minds of Soviet citizens in the 1920s-1930s in the perception of airplanes as achievements of scientific and technological progress. Based on an analysis of memoirs, the article identifies the affective connotations used when describing the impression that the airplane made on ordinary rural residents, assesses the correspondence of the public’s reaction to the educational work and propaganda that the country’s leadership carried out in relation to Soviet aviation, and also demonstrates the relationship between the perception of the airplane and the perception of pilots. The scientific novelty of the study is determined by the fact that the problem of the Soviet public’s perception of such a technological achievement as the airplane has never previously been in the focus of scientific research and has not been studied. The results of the study express the thesis that throughout the entire period of the 1920s-1930s, the airplane remained a “miracle” for residents of Soviet villages and settlements and never became an organic part of everyday life – the appearance of an airplane in rural areas in the pre-war period was still perceived as an amazing event. Contrary to the efforts of the Soviet leadership aimed at educating technically literate citizens and promoting aviation, especially characteristic of the 1930s, the Soviet public became accustomed to aviation technologies much more slowly than the Soviet authorities might have expected. The image of a hero pilot, constructed in the Soviet periodical press and visual culture, despite the motivational effect and raising the prestige of the flight profession in society, created in the minds of Soviet residents an even greater gap between the perception of representatives of ordinary people and heroic “falcons”, in whom they saw carriers of a special culture, “chosen” ones capable of controlling mechanical birds.