
How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet - ingve
http://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/6689/5482
======
bjp210
One more author rant before the thread vanishes, here are a couple points from
the book.

1\. The Soviet internet is a sideways allegory for the present. The Soviet
Union, once we work through its parade of horribles, helps separate us from
and then rethink our current network values. General secretaries, whether
state or corporate, have long been trying to privatize our information.

2\. The reasons the Soviets did not develop a network are not the reasons we
often like to think: it's not because networks are anathema to censorship and
control structures (think cybersecurity and dictatorships today), it's not
because of technological backwardness (que Soviet military networks since the
mid 1950s), it's not exactly because their genuinely screwed up command
economy was either too rigid or hierarchical (que the rest of the book).

3\. The Soviet story is a tragedy of big science and state support gone wrong,
as well as a cautionary tale for how we go about building the network future
in those terms.

And a link dump: enjoy!

Review by David Strom

[http://blog.strom.com/wp/?p=5287](http://blog.strom.com/wp/?p=5287)

Review by Michael Gordin in Nature

[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v532/n7600/full/532438a...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v532/n7600/full/532438a.html)

Podcast segment with Kerri Smith (starts at 6:50) in Nature

[http://www.nature.com/nature/podcast/index-2016-04-28.html](http://www.nature.com/nature/podcast/index-2016-04-28.html)

Conversation in The Atlantic.

[http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/04/us-
res...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/04/us-research-and-
development/477435/)

~~~
aomurphy
So, I'm getting the sense this is related to Glushkov's work on pricing right?
My understanding, please correct me if I am wrong, was to try and track all
items and use computer systems to optimize production and pricing. Was that
integral to the network he envisioned? Do you touch much on the various
economic debates in the Soviet Academy at the time on how to run a non-market
system, like Kantorovich's ideas?

~~~
bjp210
That's right. The network project was the means Glushkov envisioned for
realizing both economic optimization and a series of other technical upgrades,
both wild (like mind uploading) and mundane (like paperless office). Yes,
Kantorovich, Glushkov, and the economic cybernetic regulation of market
without the market (contra Kosygin-Liberman reforms) figure squarely into the
central chapters.

------
bjp210
Thanks, pjc50, for the helpful reference. This is the author of the book here.
Your instincts are sharp. As it happens, I deal with exactly your last
argument in the book, so let me gently suggest that if in fact there were "no
way" for anything but central control, this book would not exist because there
would be no story to tell. However, it does, and the three-decade Soviet story
told here, whose protagonist is a leading theorized of in fact decentralized
power, might deserve another glance...

~~~
catwell
The same thing happened in France, kind of.

For a while (in the 70s and 80s) there were _two_ competing, state-sponsored
networks in France: Minitel, based on x25 and made by French telcos, and
Cyclades, based on datagrams and made by French CS research labs. The telcos
lobbied the government to cut funding for Cyclades, which they saw as a
competitor, and it eventually happened (under Valéry Giscard d'Estaing,
probably neither Pompidou nor de Gaulle would have made that mistake).

There is a very good book (in French) about that story, called La France en
réseaux, by Valérie Schafer. It is one of my favorite tech history books. I
will certainly read yours and hope it is as good!

However, I saw it is only available as hardcover. Any chance you can make it
available for Kindle?

~~~
bjp210
Thanks, catwell. Super helpful. Schafer's work comes highly recommended. I'll
get to it!

MIT Press put out an e-book version, and the soft cover comes out later this
year. (A pdf is probably out there too...)

------
hodwik2
A number of African nations are currently struggling with this -- attempting
to bootstrap nationwide networking from zero, while having economies which are
very much command economies (although in Africa, that's due to corruption,
rather than being baked into the law).

In one small African nation the government was intensely interested in
building a national system for finding lost cows. (This was a much-touted
presidential initiative.) Basically, farmers would be able to text their cow's
ID and the system would tell them if another farmer had found it.

In spite of the simplicity of such a system, it took them years of 'research
and development', and enormous budgets spent, for a system which they
discovered in the end, didn't work. It turned out, they couldn't figure out
how to procure and install a server for it to run on.

~~~
pjc50
Western developed economies are quite capable of doing this, such as the
Canadian gun registry which somehow managed to spend billions of dollars
without achieving anything.

~~~
presidentender
CGI, which built the registry, is the parent company of CGI Federal, known
lately for the Obamacare site.

~~~
Aelinsaar
Let me guess... they're absurdly well connected though?

~~~
Bluestrike2
You don't get large federal contracts without being well-connected.

~~~
pasbesoin
And this sub-thread is one, if tiny and partial, solution. Sunlight (public
knowledge and understanding), bleaching out such stains. I appreciate the
pointers.

And... we shouldn't let these people simply re-organize under new names.

Just as I'm likely to look askance at anyone with Goldman Sachs in their
resume. Only, I prefer to know and respond more specifically.

------
pjc50
See also "Project Cybersyn" for another attempt at making a computerised
command economy work. It's referenced in the article.

While this looks like an fascinating read, it's worth remembering that the
thing that makes the Internet the Internet, distinguishing it from other
Western systems like X25, Minitel, and telecoms in general is its peer-to-peer
nature with minimal central arbitration(+).

The Soviet Union rationed access to photocopiers. There was no way it would
ever build a network that was not entirely subject to central control, and
this must inevitably handicap its usage and development.

(+) Minimal, not zero. The central point for a long time was Jon Postel.

~~~
_delirium
Project Cybersyn is interesting as a kind of alternate-history thought
experiment, but imo it's not _that_ useful as an example to study historically
to learn empirical lessons from, because of how early it was canceled (due to
military coup). It was first proposed in mid-1971, with design and prototyping
starting in 1972, and Allende was overthrown in 1973, when it was still at a
prototype stage. If it had run for a few more years, there would've been a lot
more to go on.

------
qaq
Actually if you compare the cost and quality of internet service in US and
some of the states formerly part of USSR it will make you very sad. An
equivalent of comcast $50 plan will run you $5 and that's with no caps or
shaping . Looking at less then stellar origins of internet in USSR you can see
how monopolization f$%ed up US ISP market.

~~~
PostOnce
Former Soviet states have lower incomes, which means both a smaller ability to
pay for services, as well as a lower cost of providing services (building and
maintaining infrastructure, installation, support, those types of wages) on
behalf of the ISP.

Other European states that were never Soviet also have much cheaper much
faster average internet connections than the US... but these places are much
smaller and more easily connected and maintained, I suppose.

Anyway, the picture isn't so black and white, maybe we get screwed in the US,
but maybe we don't or not as badly as you suggest.

Tangentially, I am amazed you can get unlimited satellite cell internet for
$125/mo from Iridium now, I'm sure that plan is slow as molasses but... its
global and that's amazing to me.

~~~
nitrogen
_Other European states that were never Soviet also have much cheaper much
faster average internet connections than the US... but these places are much
smaller and more easily connected and maintained, I suppose._

If this were truly the cause of the US's bandwidth backwardness, then denser
pockets of the US should have been wired with gigabit access around the year
2000. Instead, urban areas often have much worse speeds and prices.

------
ChemicalWarfare
From what I understand, in Soviet Russia/Eastern Bloc pretty much everything
IT-related was copied from the West - various clones of IBM, DEC, Intel
architectures. There were some original designs but they didn't really take
off.

So given that I'm not really surprised 'soviet internet' didn't come to
fruition even though I'm sure the book is an interesting read from the
historical perspective.

~~~
bjp210
This is a reasonable instinct, although, as I argue in the book, it really
only explains things after the 1975 KGB-advised decision to harness the Soviet
IT industries to cloning western innovations. Before that decision, between
1959 and 1975, when the Soviet networks are getting their start, the Soviet
computing industry is often pioneering and interesting. After 1975, Soviet
deliberate technological just-behindness does not equate to technological
backwardness. One of the takeaways of this story is that peerless imaginative
foresight, technological wizardry, and political prowess are not enough to
change the world.

~~~
PerfectDlite
> between 1959 and 1975, when the Soviet networks are getting their start, the
> Soviet computing industry is often pioneering and interesting.

And when you really decide to see what was so pioneering in Soviet computing
industry, it all boils down from 'pioneering' to only 'interesting'.

Which helps to get a perspective on a true scope of Soviet CS research.

After all, layered copying of Intel x86 CPUs also was 'pioneering and
interesting'.

~~~
avmich
> After all, layered copying of Intel x86 CPUs also was 'pioneering and
> interesting'.

It was; at some periods I think Soviets were world leaders in electronics
reverse engineering. Those techniques were rumored to get used well after USSR
death in some Asian countries.

MESM -> BESM-6 machines I've heard had some abilities like a number of
simultaneously supported IO ports (AS system for space program?) - which may
or may not be considered pioneering. Another example is Setun ternary
computer; of course that's providing we should consider some computers after
ENIAC 'pioneering enough'.

~~~
pasbesoin
That's the one that rings a faint bell, for me -- ternary systems. Although
I've no background to speak of and suspect, based on their work in mathematics
et al., that there is considerably more to the story, including and perhaps
especially on the theoretical side.

------
sevensor
This is really interesting! I ran into hints of this when I was doing the lit
review for my dissertation. Not so much the internet part, but there was a
RAND corporation memo on the Five-Year Plan of 1970 that mentioned the goal of
placing all industrial production under rational, automatic control. I suppose
I could have inferred an internet from that, but I was more interested in the
idea that they wanted to run their economy with a giant linear program. (Which
is an idea that was also briefly popular in the U.S. during the late 1940s and
early 50s.)

~~~
bjp210
Sevensor, I'd LOVE to read more about this. Is there more in your diss?

~~~
sevensor
Not a whole lot. I mention it in passing. You can get the Rand corporation's
1970 _Soviet Cybernetics Review_ here:
[http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_memoranda/RM6200z1.html](http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_memoranda/RM6200z1.html)
It makes for fascinating reading.

Edit: If you're interested in the late-40s zeitgeist in the US, Tjalling
Koopmans' 1951 Charnes Commission report is available here:
[http://cowles.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/pub/mon/m13...](http://cowles.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/pub/mon/m13-all.pdf).
My apologies to Yale for hotlinking.

Edit 2: That's _Cowles_ commission, not _Charnes_ commission. Charnes might
have been at the meeting (I forget off the top of my head) but it wasn't his
commission!

~~~
bjp210
Excellent! I know the 1970s RAND review and am delighted to learn about the
Cowles commission material here.

------
sedachv
> Least of all did I imagine that this story would throw me headlong into a
> study of Soviet bureaucracies.

That is kind of like trying to understand the history of the Internet without
understanding how the US Congress, DoD, (D)ARPA, and NSF relate and work.

~~~
bjp210
Precisely

------
anovikov
Internet could not exist in a country whose existence was based on censorship
and information control.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
China seems to be handling it fine.

~~~
methou
The Internet is a relatively new thing to China, so is GFW, the rapid upgrade
of GFW, iirc, began appeared on somewhere after 2014. Before that, VPNs and
Proxies were very stable, and minimal maintenance was required.

To the reason why it looks fine right now, my guess, is that the Chinese
community is very much self-sufficient[1], plus, the majority of Chinese
readers don't use any other language than Chinese itself. So it might not be
about how it was handled, it's about what China is like.

\-- [1]
[https://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/2016/04/%E5%A4%A7%E8%B...](https://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/2016/04/%E5%A4%A7%E8%B1%A1%E5%85%AC%E4%BC%9A%EF%BD%9C%E6%B1%89%E8%AF%AD%E5%AF%B9%E7%8E%B0%E4%BB%A3%E6%96%87%E6%98%8E%E7%9A%84%E8%B4%A1%E7%8C%AE%E6%9C%89%E5%A4%9A%E5%A4%A7/)

~~~
bjp210
Really interesting. "About what Russia is like" is the short story of this
book, and there's huge room for more comparative work on the networks between
these two giant socialist states without democracy on the Eurasian steppe. As
best I can tell, this book may be translated into Mandarin before it makes it
into Russian.

------
neolefty
From 6th paragraph:

> The first global civilian computer networks developed among cooperative
> capitalists, not among competitive socialists. The capitalists behaved like
> socialists while the socialists behaved like capitalists.

Great contrast! What is the deeper lesson here?

~~~
bjp210
Thanks! There's many. Here's a couple: liberal economic language gets the cold
war wrong. Our policies are often at their best when we start by doubting
inherited commitments to either markets or states. Mixed economies have long
been the default. And Hannah Arendt got something right: the cold war is not
so much about a clash of competing ideologies as it is the rise of parties
that privatize social (network) power. Etc.

------
methou
Turns out GFW isn't so original after all. _sigh_

------
known
Ireland has been doing this for very long time

------
ommunist
Ehm... The author of the article barely scratches the surface. He has no
information on Soviet military networks, especially those decentralised ones
introduced in anti-air missile system in the last decades of the USSR. КСА
«Рапира-Ц» for those who really wants to know. And that guys, was the thingy.
Also search for АСУ «Пирамида» if interested.

~~~
varjag
Unfortunately, that's how all discussions of Soviet technology inevitably end
up: but ooh it's space or ooh it's military. This mindset is well captured in
the famous track "Аквалангисты" by Mango-Mango.

Most of it was pretty mundane and touchingly backwards, just less shoddily
built than civilian equipment. I took apart a fair quantity of BMP-2 and T-72
instrument panels; call it my contribution to arms reduction and the world
peace. My first joystick was converted from an ATGM control station. I've been
with ZGV in East Germany while it's equipment and supplies were hustled away
by entrepreneurial NCOs and officers. I worked with some of the guys who
copied ЕС ЭВМ series from IBM products with cracking stories about realities
on the ground.

There's no secret sauce, despite no shortage of impressive Cyrillic acronyms
and chest thumping.

~~~
ommunist
So you admit, you never served you duty at ПВО. While you had been getting
dirty selling diesel from T72 for Marlboro blocks in East Germany, other guys
invented proper original communication systems and did their best. АСВТ
designed and developed fully automatic Искра network, of which you probably
never heard, listening to Mango Mango and other jazz.

~~~
varjag
"у нас есть такиииие приборы.. но мы вам о них не расскажем!"

Well, neither you served in air defence, so other than some bizarre personal
attack am not sure what your point was here. It is however remarkable how you
paint me a greedy traitor for bringing a dose of realism to your unrestrained
pioneer enthusiasm.

I worked with a bunch of people from NII SA, the principal developer of ES
series. Some of them ended up as mobile mounted C&C elements for the military
and on relay com stations, including strategic networks. They were equally
shoddy however (and clones of the Western architectures to begin with). The
shortest guy in the team once had to sit inside a panel fanning an overheating
assembly with a piece of plywood during military acceptance test.

Soivet computing in 1980s was pretty stale. And it simply doesn't happen that
people making sad shit for civilian side become sudden geniuses when switching
to defence orders. Computing systems were inadequate on factories, research
bureaus, power grid, they simply could not not suck in the military too. There
were no separate research institutes designing computer architectures for
military only, no factories producing separate component base just for
military. If anything, the civilian production was a side business at most
enterprises and were manned by same people. General state of research,
production culture and scientific effort determines the baseline, and USSR was
behind on all three in CS.

