17 ms·

Why the Soviet Union did not build a nationwide computer network (2008) [pdf]

161 points by lainon 9y ago

rossdavidh 9y ago
I would really be interested in the opinion of anyone on HN who lived in the Soviet Union as to whether this sounds plausible as an explanation. It does to me, but I don't think I would have the ability to recognize an implausible explanation of how the Soviet Union worked, as I had no real-world experience of it.
- away2017throw 9y ago
  You will not find someone neutral and middle-aged enough here. Also quite boring to read the whole thing.
- gandhium 9y ago
  Bureaucracy, lack of reforms, unreliable chips/components, paranoidal secrecy and tendency to lie in their economical reports - sounds pretty much Soviet Union to me.
- vkou 9y ago
  My father insists that the productivity failures of the late Union were due to large-scale theft, corruption, and lack of accountability on the part of... Pretty much everyone in the supply chain. Even if some factory director were doing a good job, there were a million and one reasons outside of his control that impacted his productivity. A third of the GDP going towards the Red Army did not help. If that is indeed an accurate assessment of the situation, then computer-driven planning would not have done one whit to fix it. You can't fix these kinds of institutional problems, without changing the management culture - as anyone who has worked on a 'agile-in-name-only' team could attest to. Anecdote of the theft: My mother's uncle was some regional agricultural inspector/manager/auditor. Didn't actually do any farm work himself. Every year, around harvest time, he would, for a few weeks would come back from work with a trunk loaded with fresh produce, meat, etc. Now, consider that, and extrapolate it to the entire country. Yes, things got done, but not as well as they could have. Corruption is a huge tax on the economy.
  - T2_t2 9y ago
    And the incentives spiral downwards. If everyone cheats, the only sensible course of action is to also cheat. This is exacerbated in communist countries (like North Korea) that don't provide their people with enough via legit means. If you are hungry, and your standard rations aren't enough, cheating to get enough becomes vital, which encourages more cheating and even less given away freely and the race to the bottom starts.
- da02 9y ago
  An economist who defected from the Soviet Union, Yuri Maltsev, has been quite vocal about his experiences in the Soviet Union. There are plenty of videos of his presentations: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=yuri+maltsev https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=yuri+maltsev But, he doesn't hang around HN. He saw his well-educated colleagues reduced to stealing paper-clips. When he visited the US, friends asked him mainly for mascara and condoms: https://youtu.be/1KzaJwEaOwU?t=96 https://youtu.be/1KzaJwEaOwU?t=96 In 47:50 of this video (https://youtu.be/s88pMN3qDRQ?t=2870 https://youtu.be/s88pMN3qDRQ?t=2870), he states something extraordinary: the Soviet economy was between 6% and 7% of the US economy when he defected to the US. The US and UK intel. agencies had higher estimates of between 45%-90%.
  - eps 9y ago
    > he states something extraordinary Extraordinary stories is a hallmark of people who were defecting back in Soviet times. A massive grain of salt won't hurt when digesting them.
- throw-away-8 9y ago
  A combination of several well-known principles: - "everything around is Soviet, everything around is mine", - "they pretend they pay us salary, we pretend we work" (in this order), - no competition meant exclusively single points of failure in decision making chains of authority, i.e. ossified management structures with no self-correcting loops, - resource allocation and deallocation by a central planning authority.
- xefer 9y ago
  I recommend the book "Red Plenty" by Francis Spufford: https://amazon.com/o/asin/B0074HCLPE https://amazon.com/o/asin/B0074HCLPE It's a novel set as a series of historical vignettes. While it is semi-fictional, it's been widely praised for capturing the initial optimism and the growing absurdity behind the Soviet economy, the people trying to control it and its effects on the citizens in general. It does describe in part the attempt to computerize the economy and how the system was gamed, etc.
winterismute 9y ago
Not many people know that instead another socialist country did try to build such a network: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn The project was probably overly ambitious and anyway could not last for more than 2 years given the suicide of Allende just after the coup, but it is still fairly fascinating.
- Filligree 9y ago
  Well, maybe if the USA hadn't couped them?
  - k__ 9y ago
    Didn't their economy plummet because of their president?
    - gandhium 9y ago
      Looks like there's a golden rule - blame US for everything.
      - dotancohen 9y ago
        Actually, a US Senate committee has this to say on the topic two years later: > The CIA attempted, directly, to foment a military coup in Chile. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee
      - ionised 9y ago
        Think about why that is.
        i_am_nomad 9y ago
        Because that’s way easier than taking responsibility for your own mistakes? Based on my observations of human nature, that would be my bet.
mohn 9y ago
Previous discussion on the "InterNyet" topic (a 2016-10-17 Aeon essay, not this exact PDF): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12724009 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12724009
- alekseypo 9y ago
  Thanks, this is really interesting stuff.
Isamu 9y ago
Anybody remember the kremvax April-fools hoax on Usenet (1984)? From chernenko@kremvax.UUCP Sun Apr 1 15:02:52 1984 Relay-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83 (MC840302); site mcvax.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 4/1/84 (SU840401); site kremvax.UUCP Path: mcvax!moskvax!kremvax!chernenko From: chernenko@kremvax.UUCP Newsgroups: net.general,eunet.general,net.politics,eunet.politics Subject: USSR on Usenet Message-ID: <0001@kremvax.UUCP> Date: Sun, 1-Apr-84 15:02:52 GMT Article-I.D.: kremvax.0001 Posted: Sun Apr 1 15:02:52 1984 Date-Received: Mon, 1-Apr-84 12:26:02 GMT Organization: MIIA, Moscow Lines: 41 <.....> Well, today, 840401, this is at last the Socialist Union of Soviet Republics joining the Usenet network and saying hallo to everybody. One reason for us to join this network has been to have a means of having an open discussion forum with the American and European people and making clear to them our strong efforts towards attaining peaceful coexistence between the people of the Soviet Union and those of the United States and Europe. We have been informed that on this network many people have given strong anti-Russian opinions, but we believe they have been misguided by their leaders, especially the American administration, who is seeking for war and domination of the world. By well informing those people from our side we hope to have a possibility to make clear to them our intentions and ideas. Some of those in the Western world, who believe in the truth of what we say have made possible our entry on this network; to them we are very grateful. We hereby invite you to freely give your comments and opinions. Here are the data for our backbone site: Name: moskvax Organization: Moscow Institute for International Affairs Contact: K. Chernenko Phone: +7 095 840401 Postal-Address: Moscow, Soviet Union Electronic-Address: mcvax!moskvax!kremvax!chernenko News: mcvax kremvax kgbvax Mail: mcvax kremvax kgbvax And now, let's open a flask of Vodka and have a drink on our entry on this network. So: NA ZDAROVJE! -- K. Chernenko, Moscow, USSR ...{decvax,philabs}!mcvax!moskvax!kremvax!chernenko https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kremvax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kremvax
GoToRO 9y ago
In Romania you would get arrested if you had a walkie-talkie. The fixed phones were installed only in the homes of people that were part of the regime (even if you had a very simple role like handling money). They invested some on PCs but only until it became clear that they allowed easy access to information. Then it was dead. So in my view no communist country would invest in a national network because that would make information easier to transmit and this would undermine the regime. Keep people in the dark and they might be happy with their misserable life. Even people closer to the regime believed they had a good life because they received bananas and oranges before every Christmas...
- pinewurst 9y ago
  https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/11/the-underground-story-of-cobra-the-1980s-illicit-handmade-computer/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/11/the-underground-stor... An example of people trying to circumvent restrictions in Romania.
- pvg 9y ago
  Romania was a bit of an outlier even among Warsaw pact countries, though. All these regimes were quite paranoid about anything that might challenge their power but the Romanian one went to the extra level of repression and control.
- sandworm101 9y ago
  >> a national network because that would make information easier to transmit and this would undermine the regime. That is the old thinking. Today many such countries are realizing that such information networks are great tools both for surveillance (China) and manipulation (Russia). Telephones were once seen a threat, until they realized that intercepting telephone calls is far easier than intercepting letters. North Korea is probably behind the curve on this front. Give everyone a smartphone. Get them to direct as much of their lives as possible through that phone. Now you can watch them better than ever before. That students will use the phones to organize protests pales in comparison to the intelligence streams they create.
  - 9y ago
pishpash 9y ago
tl;dr: * Recent scholarship on the 'co-construction' of users and technology emphasizes the role of users in defining, modifying, redesigning, and resisting new technologies ... * (In the US), users (were civilians and) ... redefined the ARPANET ... (from) ... its initial purpose as a resource sharing tool ... (into) ... a venue of communication ..., when email service emerged as a 'smash hit.' * (In the USSR), individual ministries ... (appropriated) ... the role of primary users of management information systems ... and ... transformed the original concept of a national network into a patchwork of ministry-subordinated data banks, ... (transforming) ... the tool ... from a vehicle of reform into a pillar of the status quo.
WillyOnWheels 9y ago
related http://seansrussiablog.org/2016/06/15/the-stillbirth-of-the-soviet-internet/ http://seansrussiablog.org/2016/06/15/the-stillbirth-of-the-...
stcredzero 9y ago
The author focuses on the political dimension of seemingly technical proposals, the relationship between information and power, and the transformative role of users of computer technology One of the things that programmers who are also business people need to keep in mind, is that information technology is often a tool of power or regulation. Power is limited by information/knowledge. You cannot exercise power over something that you know nothing about. If your knowledge of something is incomplete, then your power over it is also incomplete. (It is also easy to see this in RTS games, where the mechanic is called the "Fog of War.") This principle is also readily apparent in social media. Information technology was used to disperse power and put it into many hands, with widespread results in current day society. Information technology can also be used to aggregate power into fewer hands. Many forms of social media are an example of both dispersal and aggregation at the same time. Startups accomplish goals by aggregating power. Creating new markets and ecosystems is both the aggregation and dispersal of power. Exercising your right of association in such a situation is the exercise of power. It is very important, therefore, to remember that 1) power corrupts, especially arbitrary power absent oversight and therefore 2) power is best exercised transparently.
ttflee 9y ago
I doubt if this would be the future of the whatever network in China, after someday it cut itself from the rest of Internet.
ttflee 9y ago
The part about Khrushchev's failed reform of economic management was interesting as if he had failed to refactor Soviet systems from monolithic into micro-service based.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
_nx010_ 9y ago
Probably because it's proponents didn't have enough clout in the party, and faced too much institutional inertia. Reading the manuscript, that appears to be the case: >Industrial managers and government bureaucrats opposed the computerization of economic planning and management because it exposed their inefficiency, reduced their power and control of information, and ultimately threatened to make them redundant. On the other hand, liberal economic reformers viewed Glushkov’s proposal as a conservative attempt to further centralize the control of the economy and to suppress the autonomy of small economic units. In other words, for entirely practical reasons. Not because evil communists didn't want people to have too much freedom, as the top comment in this thread suggests.
asty_khan 9y ago
Bolsheviks were a faction in Russian communist movement. they were communist.
throw2016 9y ago
These kind of topics need far more depth and detail for informed discussion that a forum discussion would allow, and its easy to get tied up clarifying misinformation and propaganda. Those who are interested already know, others are happy with a superficial understanding of issues. There is little doubt many states were terrified of communism and what its success could mean and also communist states whenever tried devolved in some form of totalitarianism and a great betrayal of the people and principles. Communist states have not been able to deliver on the promises and neither have capitalist states. The only constant is there are always a group of elites who manage to concentrate power, influence and wealth and drive agendas.
astrix_pre 9y ago
These kind of topics need far more depth and detail for informed discussion that a forum discussion would allow

161 points by lainon 9y ago

I would really be interested in the opinion of anyone on HN who lived in the Soviet Union as to whether this sounds plausible as an explanation. It does to me, but I don't think I would have the ability to recognize an implausible explanation of how the Soviet Union worked, as I had no real-world experience of it.

away2017throw 9y ago
You will not find someone neutral and middle-aged enough here. Also quite boring to read the whole thing.
gandhium 9y ago
Bureaucracy, lack of reforms, unreliable chips/components, paranoidal secrecy and tendency to lie in their economical reports - sounds pretty much Soviet Union to me.
vkou 9y ago
My father insists that the productivity failures of the late Union were due to large-scale theft, corruption, and lack of accountability on the part of... Pretty much everyone in the supply chain. Even if some factory director were doing a good job, there were a million and one reasons outside of his control that impacted his productivity. A third of the GDP going towards the Red Army did not help. If that is indeed an accurate assessment of the situation, then computer-driven planning would not have done one whit to fix it. You can't fix these kinds of institutional problems, without changing the management culture - as anyone who has worked on a 'agile-in-name-only' team could attest to. Anecdote of the theft: My mother's uncle was some regional agricultural inspector/manager/auditor. Didn't actually do any farm work himself. Every year, around harvest time, he would, for a few weeks would come back from work with a trunk loaded with fresh produce, meat, etc. Now, consider that, and extrapolate it to the entire country. Yes, things got done, but not as well as they could have. Corruption is a huge tax on the economy.
- T2_t2 9y ago
  And the incentives spiral downwards. If everyone cheats, the only sensible course of action is to also cheat. This is exacerbated in communist countries (like North Korea) that don't provide their people with enough via legit means. If you are hungry, and your standard rations aren't enough, cheating to get enough becomes vital, which encourages more cheating and even less given away freely and the race to the bottom starts.
da02 9y ago
An economist who defected from the Soviet Union, Yuri Maltsev, has been quite vocal about his experiences in the Soviet Union. There are plenty of videos of his presentations: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=yuri+maltsev https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=yuri+maltsev But, he doesn't hang around HN. He saw his well-educated colleagues reduced to stealing paper-clips. When he visited the US, friends asked him mainly for mascara and condoms: https://youtu.be/1KzaJwEaOwU?t=96 https://youtu.be/1KzaJwEaOwU?t=96 In 47:50 of this video (https://youtu.be/s88pMN3qDRQ?t=2870 https://youtu.be/s88pMN3qDRQ?t=2870), he states something extraordinary: the Soviet economy was between 6% and 7% of the US economy when he defected to the US. The US and UK intel. agencies had higher estimates of between 45%-90%.
- eps 9y ago
  > he states something extraordinary Extraordinary stories is a hallmark of people who were defecting back in Soviet times. A massive grain of salt won't hurt when digesting them.
throw-away-8 9y ago
A combination of several well-known principles: - "everything around is Soviet, everything around is mine", - "they pretend they pay us salary, we pretend we work" (in this order), - no competition meant exclusively single points of failure in decision making chains of authority, i.e. ossified management structures with no self-correcting loops, - resource allocation and deallocation by a central planning authority.
xefer 9y ago
I recommend the book "Red Plenty" by Francis Spufford: https://amazon.com/o/asin/B0074HCLPE https://amazon.com/o/asin/B0074HCLPE It's a novel set as a series of historical vignettes. While it is semi-fictional, it's been widely praised for capturing the initial optimism and the growing absurdity behind the Soviet economy, the people trying to control it and its effects on the citizens in general. It does describe in part the attempt to computerize the economy and how the system was gamed, etc.

winterismute 9y ago

Not many people know that instead another socialist country did try to build such a network: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn The project was probably overly ambitious and anyway could not last for more than 2 years given the suicide of Allende just after the coup, but it is still fairly fascinating.

Filligree 9y ago
Well, maybe if the USA hadn't couped them?
- k__ 9y ago
  Didn't their economy plummet because of their president?
  - gandhium 9y ago
    Looks like there's a golden rule - blame US for everything.
    - dotancohen 9y ago
      Actually, a US Senate committee has this to say on the topic two years later: > The CIA attempted, directly, to foment a military coup in Chile. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee
    - ionised 9y ago
      Think about why that is.
      - i_am_nomad 9y ago
        Because that’s way easier than taking responsibility for your own mistakes? Based on my observations of human nature, that would be my bet.

mohn 9y ago

Previous discussion on the "InterNyet" topic (a 2016-10-17 Aeon essay, not this exact PDF): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12724009 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12724009

alekseypo 9y ago
Thanks, this is really interesting stuff.

Isamu 9y ago

Anybody remember the kremvax April-fools hoax on Usenet (1984)? From chernenko@kremvax.UUCP Sun Apr 1 15:02:52 1984 Relay-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83 (MC840302); site mcvax.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 4/1/84 (SU840401); site kremvax.UUCP Path: mcvax!moskvax!kremvax!chernenko From: chernenko@kremvax.UUCP Newsgroups: net.general,eunet.general,net.politics,eunet.politics Subject: USSR on Usenet Message-ID: <0001@kremvax.UUCP> Date: Sun, 1-Apr-84 15:02:52 GMT Article-I.D.: kremvax.0001 Posted: Sun Apr 1 15:02:52 1984 Date-Received: Mon, 1-Apr-84 12:26:02 GMT Organization: MIIA, Moscow Lines: 41 <.....> Well, today, 840401, this is at last the Socialist Union of Soviet Republics joining the Usenet network and saying hallo to everybody. One reason for us to join this network has been to have a means of having an open discussion forum with the American and European people and making clear to them our strong efforts towards attaining peaceful coexistence between the people of the Soviet Union and those of the United States and Europe. We have been informed that on this network many people have given strong anti-Russian opinions, but we believe they have been misguided by their leaders, especially the American administration, who is seeking for war and domination of the world. By well informing those people from our side we hope to have a possibility to make clear to them our intentions and ideas. Some of those in the Western world, who believe in the truth of what we say have made possible our entry on this network; to them we are very grateful. We hereby invite you to freely give your comments and opinions. Here are the data for our backbone site: Name: moskvax Organization: Moscow Institute for International Affairs Contact: K. Chernenko Phone: +7 095 840401 Postal-Address: Moscow, Soviet Union Electronic-Address: mcvax!moskvax!kremvax!chernenko News: mcvax kremvax kgbvax Mail: mcvax kremvax kgbvax And now, let's open a flask of Vodka and have a drink on our entry on this network. So: NA ZDAROVJE! -- K. Chernenko, Moscow, USSR ...{decvax,philabs}!mcvax!moskvax!kremvax!chernenko https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kremvax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kremvax

GoToRO 9y ago

In Romania you would get arrested if you had a walkie-talkie. The fixed phones were installed only in the homes of people that were part of the regime (even if you had a very simple role like handling money). They invested some on PCs but only until it became clear that they allowed easy access to information. Then it was dead. So in my view no communist country would invest in a national network because that would make information easier to transmit and this would undermine the regime. Keep people in the dark and they might be happy with their misserable life. Even people closer to the regime believed they had a good life because they received bananas and oranges before every Christmas...

pinewurst 9y ago
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/11/the-underground-story-of-cobra-the-1980s-illicit-handmade-computer/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/11/the-underground-stor... An example of people trying to circumvent restrictions in Romania.
pvg 9y ago
Romania was a bit of an outlier even among Warsaw pact countries, though. All these regimes were quite paranoid about anything that might challenge their power but the Romanian one went to the extra level of repression and control.
sandworm101 9y ago
>> a national network because that would make information easier to transmit and this would undermine the regime. That is the old thinking. Today many such countries are realizing that such information networks are great tools both for surveillance (China) and manipulation (Russia). Telephones were once seen a threat, until they realized that intercepting telephone calls is far easier than intercepting letters. North Korea is probably behind the curve on this front. Give everyone a smartphone. Get them to direct as much of their lives as possible through that phone. Now you can watch them better than ever before. That students will use the phones to organize protests pales in comparison to the intelligence streams they create.
- 9y ago

pishpash 9y ago

tl;dr: * Recent scholarship on the 'co-construction' of users and technology emphasizes the role of users in defining, modifying, redesigning, and resisting new technologies ... * (In the US), users (were civilians and) ... redefined the ARPANET ... (from) ... its initial purpose as a resource sharing tool ... (into) ... a venue of communication ..., when email service emerged as a 'smash hit.' * (In the USSR), individual ministries ... (appropriated) ... the role of primary users of management information systems ... and ... transformed the original concept of a national network into a patchwork of ministry-subordinated data banks, ... (transforming) ... the tool ... from a vehicle of reform into a pillar of the status quo.

WillyOnWheels 9y ago

related http://seansrussiablog.org/2016/06/15/the-stillbirth-of-the-soviet-internet/ http://seansrussiablog.org/2016/06/15/the-stillbirth-of-the-...

stcredzero 9y ago

The author focuses on the political dimension of seemingly technical proposals, the relationship between information and power, and the transformative role of users of computer technology One of the things that programmers who are also business people need to keep in mind, is that information technology is often a tool of power or regulation. Power is limited by information/knowledge. You cannot exercise power over something that you know nothing about. If your knowledge of something is incomplete, then your power over it is also incomplete. (It is also easy to see this in RTS games, where the mechanic is called the "Fog of War.") This principle is also readily apparent in social media. Information technology was used to disperse power and put it into many hands, with widespread results in current day society. Information technology can also be used to aggregate power into fewer hands. Many forms of social media are an example of both dispersal and aggregation at the same time. Startups accomplish goals by aggregating power. Creating new markets and ecosystems is both the aggregation and dispersal of power. Exercising your right of association in such a situation is the exercise of power. It is very important, therefore, to remember that 1) power corrupts, especially arbitrary power absent oversight and therefore 2) power is best exercised transparently.

ttflee 9y ago

I doubt if this would be the future of the whatever network in China, after someday it cut itself from the rest of Internet.

ttflee 9y ago

The part about Khrushchev's failed reform of economic management was interesting as if he had failed to refactor Soviet systems from monolithic into micro-service based.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

_nx010_ 9y ago

Probably because it's proponents didn't have enough clout in the party, and faced too much institutional inertia. Reading the manuscript, that appears to be the case: >Industrial managers and government bureaucrats opposed the computerization of economic planning and management because it exposed their inefficiency, reduced their power and control of information, and ultimately threatened to make them redundant. On the other hand, liberal economic reformers viewed Glushkov’s proposal as a conservative attempt to further centralize the control of the economy and to suppress the autonomy of small economic units. In other words, for entirely practical reasons. Not because evil communists didn't want people to have too much freedom, as the top comment in this thread suggests.

asty_khan 9y ago

Bolsheviks were a faction in Russian communist movement. they were communist.

throw2016 9y ago

These kind of topics need far more depth and detail for informed discussion that a forum discussion would allow, and its easy to get tied up clarifying misinformation and propaganda. Those who are interested already know, others are happy with a superficial understanding of issues. There is little doubt many states were terrified of communism and what its success could mean and also communist states whenever tried devolved in some form of totalitarianism and a great betrayal of the people and principles. Communist states have not been able to deliver on the promises and neither have capitalist states. The only constant is there are always a group of elites who manage to concentrate power, influence and wealth and drive agendas.

astrix_pre 9y ago

These kind of topics need far more depth and detail for informed discussion that a forum discussion would allow