
Why the Soviet Union did not build a nationwide computer  network (2008) [pdf] - lainon
http://web.mit.edu/slava/homepage/articles/Gerovitch-InterNyet.pdf
======
GoToRO
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...

~~~
vumgl
As horrible as the regime was, you would not get arrested for having a walkie-
talkie. And anyone could get a phone line, except there was a looong wait
(years). And most likely you will end up on a "coupled" line, meaning that you
and your neighbor will share the same line - you can listen in to your
neighbor's conversation simply by picking up the phone.

~~~
cisanti
It depends where you lived during the regime, some parts of the soviet union
had stricter controls over communications than others. I got arrested for
having few pairs of jeans.

~~~
tryingagainbro
In other parts for having long hair (when it was popular in the West) or for
listening to foreign stations, music etc.

~~~
Tharkun
While that sort of thing was seen as being "too western" in the east, it was
seen as being "queer" or "communist" in the west. The cold war era was very
weird on both sides of the wall.

------
winterismute
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.

~~~
theoh
It's an interesting part of Stafford Beer's life story all right. But as
somebody recently said on twitter, Uber has solved the calculation problem
([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem))
but certain parties on the left are still going on about Cybersyn, apparently
mostly because of its retro-stylish control room. There's even a trendy
cybernetics-inspired conference in New York this month: cybernetics.social

Gerovitch seems as good a guide as there is to the topic, speaking as someone
who's been hearing about it and reading bits and pieces for over 10 years (of
course it's never mentioned in CS programmes).

Eden Medina's 2011 book about Cybersyn was well received and tends to crop up
in trendy bookstores. I don't mean to disparage all this but there are good
reasons why the notions of cybernetics are not central to pedagogy in any
field these days.

~~~
narrator
Uber has solved the economic calculation problem except for that little detail
that it loses billions of dollars ever year.

In fact, any business that can make a profit without subsidies has solved the
economic calculation problem, at least on a smaller than nationwide scale.
Maybe if Amazon in 20 years has vertically integrated enough that it is the
only business operating in the country and it replaces money with just telling
everyone what to do and the whole thing operating on pure faith in Amazon's
benevolence it would have solved the economic calculation problem.

~~~
Animats
Arguably, Wal-Mart solved this years ago. Wal-Mart is very centralized. It's
so centralized that store thermostats are controlled from Master Control in
Bentonville, Arkansas.

One of Sam Walton's big points is that Wal-Mart's success was not due to
scale. It was because they were moving data around instead of inventory.
Retail used to involve lots of product taking up space in warehouses, store
back rooms, and shelves in the store. All that costs the retailer money. Wal-
Mart was the first big chain to get this under control, so that product flow
followed sales flow very closely. This has an enormous financial benefit. Big
retailers typically pay 30 days behind shipments. Wal-Mart (and presumably
Amazon) usually have sold the product before they even have paid their
supplier. So their inventory cost is _negative_. Now that's cash flow
management.

Wal-Mart was one of the first retailers to bar-code everything. They meant
_everything_. Wal-Mart has a buying center in Bentonville, known in retail as
the Corridor of Doom. They put up signs along the line of "If your product
isn't bar-coded, don't bother coming in". In typical Wal-Mart fashion, they
made the suppliers apply the bar codes, both at the retail item and case
level. (They've been trying to move to RFID, but it hasn't worked out as
well.)

Gosplan was always very slow. They had a monthly information cycle and an
annual decision cycle. Wal-Mart had a daily information cycle and a weekly
decision cycle years ago, and it's probably faster now. If Gosplan had made it
to the bar-code era, they might have been able to make centralized planning
work.

------
Isamu
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)

------
stcredzero
_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.

------
rossdavidh
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.

~~~
da02
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
> _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.

------
_nx010_
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.

------
pishpash
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.

------
throw2016
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.

------
mohn
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
Thanks, this is really interesting stuff.

------
ttflee
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.

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

------
WillyOnWheels
related [http://seansrussiablog.org/2016/06/15/the-stillbirth-of-
the-...](http://seansrussiablog.org/2016/06/15/the-stillbirth-of-the-soviet-
internet/)

