The article examines the forms of mobilization impact on the engineering community, workers-innovators on the example of scientific and technical societies. The effectiveness of mobilization practices aimed at accelerating scientific and technological progress in the Tatar ASSR in the second half of the 1950s -early 1960s is estimated. The relevance of the study is due to the fact that throughout the post-war era, the problem of accelerating scientific and technological progress had a key role in Soviet economic policy, but already the 1970s clearly marked a slowdown in the rate of scientific and technical progress. Based on the materials of the regional and central archives, the author substantiates the position that the differentiated nature of the structural transformations of scientific and technical societies, as well as the criteria for assessing the effectiveness of their activities reflected the mobilization nature of the Soviet economy. The difference between the Soviet historiographical tradition that characterizes progress in the development of STS, and the real effectiveness indicators such as share of manual labour in the enterprises, introduction of inventions and rationalization proposals, development level, etc. is shown It is concluded that the Soviet economic system itself, which was poorly receptive to innovations, generated bureaucracy and formalism in the work of scientific and technical societies.