- The concept of Cybernetics was proposed by Wiener in the United States.
- However, it became a target of propaganda during Stalin’s era in the Soviet Union, and was denied.
- Books on Cybernetics were banned and it was criticized in various places.
- See the sarcastic cartoon below.
- Soviet computer researchers found themselves in a taboo field due to these circumstances.
- While Western computers were being criticized, they were also being told to surpass them (contradiction).
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Slava Gerovitch writes, “In the murky waters of Cold War politics, Soviet scientists and engineers were caught between the Scylla of national defense and the Charybdis of ideological purity.”
- Even military personnel who were already engaged in computer research were troubled (afraid).
- They started replacing the term “memory” with “storage” to remove the sense of Cybernetics.
- This was done in an effort to make it ideologically acceptable.
- After Khrushchev, ideological restrictions were relaxed.
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No longer having to “Criticize and Destroy” Western science, scientists celebrated cybernetics, erasing its taboo status.
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The Academy of Sciences began publishing a periodical, Cybernetics in the Service of Communism. By 1961, the government was directing the construction of computer factories.
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- However, the utilization of computers at the time accelerated bureaucracy.
- Each ministry used its own system to maintain power.
- (This seems familiar…)
- In conclusion,
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Information technology, once “called in to prove the superiority of socialism,” concludes Gerovtich, “eventually proved the ineffectiveness of the Soviet regime.”
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- Slava Gerovitch seems to be a key figure in this field.
https://www.wilsonquarterly.com/stories/the-peculiar-history-of-computers-in-the-soviet-union/