History of Science and Engineering Annotation << Back Amateur Radio and Occupational Mobility of Russian Engineers in the 1990s – the First Half of 2000s Bogatyr N.V. This article is a side-product of ethnographic research about “the invention” and development of data recovery – one very specific technological market in Post-Soviet Russia. The study was conducted for my PhD thesis in 2003–2010 and can best be placed in the field of economic anthropology, or economic history. It reveals contexts which are important not only for understanding of the industry’s under study background, but also for better understanding of early stages of the computerization in Russia and engineers’ professional mobility in the 1990s and early 2000s. I argue, that some of 6 millions highly trained Soviet engineers, unemployed following the collapse of industry in the early 1990s, began using their amateur radio skills and working in TV, video-recorder and, eventually computer repair and services. That professional mobility, at first, was understood as downshifting leading engineers back to the craft but lately, when it became clear that those new activities require innovations vertical (downwards) mobility was redefined as horizontal one. Keywords: USSR; amateur radio; engineers; professional mobility; computerization; computer services. Contacts: E-mail: natalia_bogatyr@yahoo.com Pp. 36-48.