An Engineer?

From The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Volume I (1974) by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - -

"An engineer?  I had grown up among engineers, and I could remember the engineers of the twenties very well indeed: their free and gentle humor, their agility and breadth of thought, the ease with which they shifted from one engineering field to another, and for that matter, from technology to social concerns and art.  Then, too, they personified good manners and delicacy of taste, well-bred speech that flowed evenly and was free of uncultured words; one of them might play a musical instrument, another dabble in paint, and their faces always bore a spiritual imprint."