p An analysis of the problems arising under the current STR should be started with a definition of the object of analysis, that is, a clarification of the substance of the concepts of scientific and technical progress and scientific and technical revolution.

p Before the Second World War, technical progress, expressed in the steady improvement of production technology, and progress in the sciences (especially the natural sciences), characterising the advance in man’s cognition of the surrounding world, its structure, the uniformities underlying its development on the macro-’and micro-levels long developed on parallel lines, now and then intersecting and interacting with each other, but were not linked organically.

p The interconnections and interaction between science and technology began to intensify in the second third and especially the second half of the current century, and their increasing integration was eventually designated in scientific usage by the category "scientific and technical progress". This broadly accepted category tends increasingly to substitute for the earlier prevailing term of "technical progress". "Scientific and technical progress" is a new term reflecting actual processes in the modern world, above all the growing integration of science and technology and the ever more intensive advance of science into the leading position.

p Scientific and technical progress is closely bound up both with the productive and with the intellectual activity of men, a reciprocal connection which is realised in their ceaseless interaction. Scientific and technical progress arises 18 and develops on the basis of this activity and exerts an all-round influence on it in the process of its development. Science itself, like technical solutions, is the product of mankind’s intellectual activity. They are integrated and materialised in the advance of the productive forces, in the development and steady improvement of material production.

p Scientific and technical progress covers a very broad complex of processes in the life of the developed socialist society. I find that it is appropriate to bring out at least the following of these interconnected processes:

p —the elaboration of fundamental problems in natural sciences closely connected with the development of the scientific dialectico-materialist world view;

p —rapid progress of every branch of basic science and their ever closer integration with the chief natural, technical and social sciences helping to enhance the transformative role of science in mastering the forces of nature, and its transformation into a direct productive force;

p —progress in the social sciences, the growth of their organic interconnection with the natural sciences and mathematics, and with social processes enhancing the level of the scientific grounding of the economic and scientific and technical policies, state planning and management of society’s economic and social development as a whole, and also the level and the efficiency of economic activity by every unit of socialist social production;

p —the advance of the results of basic research to the point of development and engineering projects; the design, development and production of new and improvement of existing hardware, objects of labour and technology, which are not only capable of ensuring due development of production but also of producing a social effect, that is, of shaping the conditions and character (content) of labour and ecological conditions adequate to the requirements of the developed socialist society;

p —creation of a technical basis for transforming labour into a creative process which in itself becomes an important and vital good, a component of the wellbeing of the harmoniously developed man in the socialist and communist society;

p —extension of new machinery, materials and production methods to every sphere of social production and the 19 technical re-equipment of the whole of the economy on that basis;

p —the technical re-equipment of the sphere of the services and the dissemination of knowledge and spiritual values on a scale helping to satisfy the Soviet people’s growing requirements; creation of the material conditions for a steady increse in leisure time and its most appropriate and creative use for the shaping of the harmoniously developed man of the communist society;

p —improvement of the structure of material production and the internal proportions of the main sectoral complexes and individual sectors so as to accelerate scientific and technical progress itself and its realisation in social production; increase in the share of the most progressive industries and lines of production promoting the systematic rise in the level and enrichment of the content of popular wellbeing and ever greater efficiency of social production;

p —effective exploration and use of natural resources, notably those which because of the nature of deposits, the difficulties in working these, and the small content of the useful substance would have remained unknown or unused without scientific and technical progress, a "thing in itself" that was never used as a production resource;

p —the use of various scientific and technical achievements to improve the organisation of production, labour and management at every level of the economy.

p The impact of scientific and technical progress on society’s development goes beyond the framework of the immediate process of production. It also has a marked effect on demographic processes by producing highly efficient means of combating disease and preventing the incidence of disease, so helping to prolong life and—most importantly—the period in which men and women are engaged in social activity.

p Scientific and technical progress revolutionises the material and technical basis of the services and the dissemination of knowledge and spiritual values, increases the leisure time available to the members of society, immensely multiplies the accessible flow of information and facilitates the efficiency of its perception and processing, so promoting a marked growth in the intellectual potential of society, and in the capabilities and knowledge of men and women, the subjects of progress of science, technology and production. In this 20 way it enhances the subjective factors which help to make social production more efficient.

p Let us note yet another sphere on which scientific and technical progress exerts a very marked influence. This is the shaping of social and individual requirements. Scientific and technical progress, emerging and developing under the influence of society’s growing requirements, itself exerts an influence on these requirements, opening up whole spectra of new, unprecedented and frequently requirements unimaginable earlier, stimulating their growth, while creating the material conditions for their satisfaction.

p I have tried to formulate the functional characteristic of the results of scientific and technical progress, and the set of tasks which are tackled on its basis. What I have said shows that this set is a very broad one and that scientific and technical progress exerts an influence on virtually all the key aspects of vital activity of society.

p This naturally raises the question of the interrelation of these two categories: scientific and technical progress and scientific and technical revolution. In this book I intend to give a full-scale definition of the latter, so that I cannot, of course, produce it at the beginning. Here I shall confine myself to stating that the current STR is a complex of processes going forward in science and technology, and correspondingly in production, processes which have been most visibly developed in the second half of the 20th century. Consequently, scientific and technical progress is a broader category, while scientific and technical revolution is a characterisation of its present and foreseeable stages. By analogy, rain is a broader concept than downpour, and wind a broader concept than hurricane.

One has evidently to start by analysing the category of "scientific and technical progress", its structure and connections with the processes of economic development. This will help to determine the methodological approaches and aspects of the analysis of STR processes. At the same time, I feel that it is necessary to analyse the processes going on in the natural sciences and technology, the logic of their development, and also the development of large-scale machine production and the revolutionary changes in its basic elements, so as to provide a basis for defining the material content of STR processes, their material characterisation, socio-economic importance and consequences.