History of computing in the Soviet Union

The history of computing in the Soviet Union began in the late 1940s, when the country began to develop its Small Electronic Calculating Machine (MESM) at the Kiev Institute of Electrotechnology in Feofaniya. Initial ideological opposition to cybernetics in the Soviet Union was overcome by a Khrushchev era policy that encouraged computer production.

By the early 1970s, the uncoordinated work of competing government ministries had left the Soviet computer industry in disarray. Due to lack of common standards for peripherals and lack of digital storage capacity the Soviet Union's technology significantly lagged behind the West's semiconductor industry. The Soviet government decided to abandon development of original computer designs and encouraged cloning of existing Western systems (e.g. the 1801 CPU series was scrapped in favor of the PDP-11 ISA by the early 1980s).

Soviet industry was unable to mass-produce computers to acceptable quality standards and locally manufactured copies of Western hardware were unreliable. As personal computers spread to industries and offices in the West, the Soviet Union's technological lag increased.

Nearly all Soviet computer manufacturers ceased operations after the breakup of the Soviet Union. A few companies that survived into the 1990s used foreign components and never achieved large production volumes.

History

Western sanctions

Since computers were considered strategic goods by the United States, their sale by Western countries was generally not allowed without special permission.[75] As a result of the CoCom embargo, companies from Western Bloc countries could not export computers to the Soviet Union (or service them) without a special license.[76]

Even when sales were not forbidden by CoCom policies, the US government might still ask Western European countries to refrain from exporting computers because of foreign-policy matters, such as protesting the arrest of Soviet dissidents.[77] Software sales were not regulated as strictly, since Western policymakers realized that software could be copied (or smuggled) much more easily.[78]

Appraisal

Soviet computer software and hardware designs were often on par with Western ones, but the country's persistent inability to improve manufacturing quality meant that it could not make practical use of theoretical advances.[79] Quality control, in particular, was a major weakness of the Soviet computing industry.[80]

The decision to abandon original development in the early 1970s, rather than closing the gap with Western technology, is seen as another factor causing the Soviet computer industry to fall further behind.[2] According to Vlad Strukov, this decision destroyed the country's indigenous computer industry.[81] The software industry followed a similar path, with Soviet programmers moving their focus to duplicating Western operating systems (including DOS/360 and CP/M).[27] According to Boris Babayan

Timeline

• November 1950 – MESM, the first universally programmable electronic computer in the Soviet Union, becomes operational.[90]
• 1959 – Setun, an experimental ternary computer, is designed and manufactured.[7]
• 1965 – the Ministry of the Electronics Industry is established, ending the Ministry of Radio Technology's primacy in computer production.[18]
• 1971 – the ES EVM mainframe, based on the IBM/360 system, is launched.[2]

See also

• History of computer hardware in Eastern Bloc countries
• List of Soviet computer systems
• List of Soviet microprocessors
• List of Russian IT developers
• List of Russian microprocessors
• List of computer hardware manufacturers in the Soviet Union
• Internet in Russia
• Information technology in Russia

External links

• Russian Virtual Computer Museum
• Museum of the USSR Computers history
• Pioneers of Soviet Computing
• Archive software and documentation for Soviet computers UK-NC, DVK and BK0010.
• Oral history interview with Seymour E. Goodman, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota: discusses social and political analysis of computers, especially in the Soviet Union and other East Bloc states, notable the MOSAIC project including Trip Reports, 1957-1970, 1981-1992.