• 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.
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  • 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).
  • 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.
    • No longer having to “Criticize and Destroy” Western science, scientists celebrated cybernetics, erasing its taboo status.

    • 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.

  • However, the utilization of computers at the time accelerated bureaucracy.
    • Each ministry used its own system to maintain power.
    • (This seems familiar…)
  • In conclusion,
    • Information technology, once “called in to prove the superiority of socialism,” concludes Gerovtich, “eventually proved the ineffectiveness of the Soviet regime.”

  • 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/

The Impact of Ideology on Soviet Computer Technology