I suspect it's just the standard (for the time) term in Russian for what would be called a deployment manual and/or service manual in English. I've worked with old French documents titled "Manuel d'exploitation" that are essentially how to make the device/software work in production (installation/in use/maintenance).
As an >30 russian I can confirm. "Руководство по эксплуатации" is the standart term in USSR for any type of the end user manuals. Now user manuals just the "user" manuals (Руководство пользователя).