By 1964, cybernetics was thriving in the Soviet Union, even though it had lost popularity in the Western academic world. Gerovitch identified three distinct shifts in the Soviet Union’s official stance on cybernetics. The first was a complete rejection of cybernetics during Joseph Stalin’s rule from 1948 to 1953. The second shift occurred under Nikita Khrushchev’s leadership from 1955 to 1964, when cybernetics was enthusiastically embraced as a science that could bring about reform. The third shift took place under Leonid Brezhnev’s rule from 1964 to 1980, during which cybernetics was retooled and widely used to support the existing power structure.
Viktor Glushkov, a prominent Soviet cyberneticist, divided his career into five stages, spanning from 1956 to 1982. According to Kapitonova and Letichevskii, these stages include the “unexplored territory” stage from 1955 to 1961, the “development in depth” stage from 1962 to 1967, the “development in breadth” stage from 1968 to 1972, the “technological” stage with a focus on parallel processing from 1973 to 1978, and the “final stage” marked by a transition to informatics, which is considered a direct successor to cybernetics, from 1979 to 1982. Glushkov’s career aligns closely with the rise and decline of Soviet cybernetics, providing another perspective on the evolving relationship between Soviet society and early information sciences.