A new era in international technical communication: American-Russian collaboration

Models of the Soviet-style information society and the Western-style information society are presented, the effects of centralized governmental control of information on Russian technical communication practices are discussed. The effects of political control on technical communications are then used to interpret the results of a survey of Russian and US aerospace engineers and scientists concerning the time devoted to technical communication, their collaborative writing practices and their attitudes toward collaboration, the kinds of technical documents they produce and use, their views regarding the appropriate content for an undergraduate technical communication course, and their use of computer technology. The implications of these findings for future collaboration between Russia and US engineers and scientists are examined.