A Look Back at the USSR Computer Industry
hackaday.com
hackaday.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setun
Instead of the first bit being 1 or 0, the second being 2 or 0, etc you have different scheme where the first bit is 1, 0, or -1 the second is 3, 0, or -3, etc. So 2 would be 3 + (-1).
In practice, it didn't work out for ternary, either; Setun would use pairs of cores to represent trits.
One of the benefits of being balanced is that it's self-rounding: Just turn any amount of final digits into 0s and you're done. What if you want to express the exact half, decimal 0.5? Well you'll end up with either 1.TTTTT... or 0.11111... so it could round either way. If we were to use this system, shops could no longer manipulate us with prices ending in .99.
Give it a minute to fully grasp the concept and you'll see how intuitive it is.
That probably also depends on what you define as a computer? I'm not sure if the number for the US includes PCs and home computers (8 bit, 16 bit?), and also in the USSR and in other east bloc states during the eighties there was a flurry of home computer "clones" being built, however mostly only in small numbers - such as this one from my then-home city: https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/TIM-S (list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ZX_Spectrum_clones). But if you were to include these, the number of 10.000 definitely appears too small...
I'd be surprised if there were more than 10k computers in the entire Eastern Bloc in 1986. Even pocket calculators were an expensive luxury item, and people were hacking them to have at least some kind of computer.
Since I was at school I don't know how many there were in industry, but there were a lot of even TV broadcasts showing how to use locally made IBM PC clones for work stuff. I had no idea how anything worked in the early 1980s, hadn't seen anything, but by the end I think there were quite a lot of them. GDR even produced its own RAM chips, although there were a few jokes because we were quite behind what the rest of the world could make.
No argument that we were significantly behind, by several generations and a huge amount of equipment overall. After reunification there was a gigantic flood of modern electronic equipment for labs and industry, a hundred times more and better than what we had in terms of both sophistication and capabilities. I mean, we had things like oscillographs, but very few - after reunification you order them very cheaply even for private use - and a few generations behind what the new equipment could do. Similar with computers, we still mostly had 8 bit and very few very expensive 16 bit units.
[0] https://www.robotrontechnik.de/index.htm?/html/computer/kc_m...
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_1715
[2] Computers in the GDR https://www.elektromuseum.de/wissen-computer-ddr.html
Western electronics was expensive and rare. Industrial computers (mainframes) existed, but only specialists would come into contact with them.
Local industry tried to produce some clones of Western Sinclairs, Amigas etc., like Didaktik Gama [0]. But 1986 was too early to actually meet those "in the wild" among non-elite people. My first classmate had a Didaktik in 1988. We were all curious about it.
There also were computer fan clubs, where curious young guys would meet around those few computers that they could get access to.
I remember one of them was some sort of social media on a webpage. They could chat via the webpage.
That was a very early (earliest I had seen) implementation of chat / social media on a website.
Good work Czechs!
Bigger machines, PC clones were definitely a rarity.
Poland was absolutely not - notice that collapse of communist Poland is what pushed a lot of those "revolutions" over the edge.
Yet even Poland's "educational" computer Elwro 800 Junior [0] was created in 4500 units in 1986.
The first truly widespread "computing device" was Pegasus console - clone of NES. [1]
Pegasus arrived in 1991 but many of the 8-bit owners already upgraded to Amigas, which were really common in my area.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computing_in_the_So...
The USSR noticed that the USA was developing personal computers. So had a 5 year plan to clone some of the personal computers. They succeeded. By which time the USA had personal computers in mass production that were 10x as good. The Soviets studied HOW the Americans were doing it, and Perestroika was their response. However the freedoms created by Perestroika destabilized authoritarian rule and, well, everyone knows the result.
As expected, the YT comments point out some of the issues of fact in the video.
I know some soviet companies were able to procure western computers even in 1980s but for ordinary people it was out of reach until early 1990s or late 1980s at best (at least outside Moscow).
In USSR mid level families didn't have legal access to imported goods.
There was a chain of stores in the Soviet Union named Bierozka with western goods you could buy with USD - officially for tourists and workers from abroad.
Of course there was a flourishing currency exchange black market, but it was tolerated because it enabled the citizens to get rid of their foreign currency - something which the state wanted.
Are we discussing the same USSR?
This is the key phrase. The intent was there, but actual deployment in _some_ schools happened much later, in 1990-91.
Edit: emphasis
I think the author is currently affiliated with University of Tartu, Estonia, and possibly also with University of Sussex in the field of technology research.
The Setun and Ternary Computation. The idea of using toroidal magnetic cores instead of transistors. There's an irreducible romantic beauty and form to these computational amorphous objects.
Summary? (Can't watch video now.)
In fact Soviet computer development was quite advanced for a homegrown solution.
But I think the real difference was the relative wealth of the middle classes in each society, where the west tended to have a much wealthier society that could afford to spend more on early computers.
The video basically outlines a couple of differences (like party leadership betting on the wrong horse a couple of times), but seems to be driving by at the fact that they just had few enough buyers and didn’t iterate as fast as a result, meaning they had trouble with things like nailing down good yields. This snowballed.
You can argue USSR lacked followup demand for computing from outside the military, and that this was caused by organizational issues. It’s probably pretty important to also state the relative wealth disparity at the start of the relevant period, from 1940 onwards, say. Russia was basically feudal in 1910, and it would be hard for advancement to catch up to US levels by 1940 no matter the organization of the economy, and then we have to account for the devastation of WW2 which followed (WW2 was expensive for US, but it didn’t lose industrial capacity except via opportunity cost).
I don’t say this as any kind of apologia, but think it makes more sense to compare USSR to less developed countries than US — where it still doesn’t compare favorably in many ways, but it’s far more interesting and debatable.
One of the reasons: ideology.
Replacing 50 people team with 5 people team and a computer (less people working less hard) while possible technically wasn't desirable.
No, it was more about bureaucracy. Why an existing organization might want a computer? There were no reasons for managers to want it. They didn't need to run to keep their jobs, they just had jobs. While they managed to do a "plan" they were successful managers. If they did 2% more they were super successful. If they did 50% more they interfered with the central planning and provoked a crisis of overproduction.
To work better then others is a bad idea. You work better, more productive, then next time you'll be forced to keep this productivity, and all around you also will be. And it doesn't mean a pay rise. Just more work. Blue collars figured it pretty easily. In some placed they would use their fists to explain you, that you must not work harder than others. So I'm sure did managers, though probably without using an educational physical punishment, they had other ways. There was no stimulus to do better.
And there is one more thing. If in USSR some organization got a computer, than it would be locked, and you'd need to ask to use it. In writing. And three copies of that. Because you can accidentally break this expensive machine, and your manager doesn't want to be kept responsible for it. It is easier for him to keep it locked. Moreover, it was not your immediate superior who would do it, it would be director of an organization. So you need to hop over several layers of management to get an access to a new shiny tech. And most of these layers are not interested in your bright ideas and they do not like to be hopped over. You need to do what you told to do, and everything else is not your business. Of course central planning with a one big bureaucracy for the whole country means that you might try to hop over the director of your organization, to write a letter to some really high-level bureaucrat, but it was risky, he might just relay your letter to your director, let him to deal with it.
It is not ideology, it is a management problem. Ideology mostly didn't work at '80. It was to keep people happy, but not to make management decisions. The system was built and it replaced ideology. It is like Terry Pratchett's "Small Gods" where omnian church replaced Om and didn't need him. Belief in Om was compulsory, but it was really a decorated belief in the church. Pratchett did a great work of describing this kind of situations.
:) That's not how I remember it.
This accounts for the "flunkies" class of Bullshit Jobs [1]. And I don't think that capitalism is particularly effective in keeping this type of jobs in control as company grows. Because outside of the personal prestige of a manager, there's also the corporate facade. E.g. banks often prefer to keep paying redundant employees rather than laying them off, which would signal that they're having problems.
> The USSR was hardly a backward country — they’d launched Sputnik
> It (the computer) performed 250,000 calculations for artillery tables in about 2 and half hours.
> Nearly all the computer usage was in the military and academia.
One common argument ideologically charged people make to counter capitalism advancements is that cell phones were invented in the USSR. That might be the case but I suspect such technology was never intended to be distributed to the common person but for war and propaganda. I'm not a big fan of this kind of incentive.
Also, they killed almost 30 million of young productive citizen of USSR.
It was a huge knock which almost no other country ever endured. And it set back the development of USSR.
Also, those comments about war and propaganda are also inaccurate. USA started much more wars than USSR/Russia, and as the result of those wars USA killed at least 20 million of people, destroyed infrastructure and industry, plundered resources, e.g. oil of Iraq and Libya. And haven't built anything.
If you'd really study the history, although I'm pretty sure you won't find any accurate information about USSR in the western history books, you'll learn, for example, how USSR built kindergardens, hospitals, schools and industry in Afghanistan and other countries. Investing the money and labor of Russian people in 3rd world countries. Had ever USA did the same?.. Other than printing another billion of USD and "giving" it to some other country, with 90% disappearing in somebody's pocket in transit.
And don't get me even started on propaganda. Do you believe western society doesn't have propaganda? How comes then that you all have the same opinion about everything? Especially on external politics.
Guess which side was more stunned by the achievements of the other country? The USSR version was all about satellites and factory projects while the US version was a showcase of modern housing utensils. This triggered the famous "Kitchen Debate" between Nixon and Krushev.
In fact Nikita who had tasted Pepsi for the first time during the exhibition liked it so much he ordered tons of syrup. They paid in vodka and then in military ships. This is an interesting story about how Pepsi became one of the largest military forces of the planet for a very brief time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrwMrPIHOIw
So my entire point is yes Soviet tech might have been impressive but the incentives were never to deliver this technology into the hands of common people. All those nice computers were used to stuff like calculate artillery precision.
As for the propaganda part, the USSR suffered from a severe form of NIN illness. If the west can do it then we need to do it too! See Tupolev 144.
The initial push to computing tech came from the need for cryptographic and artillery purposes. The true first microprocessor was the Central Air Data Computer in the F-14 fighter jet. The defense industry in many ways led the way on almost all fronts -- super computing, networking (DARPA etc), cryptography, etc. etc.
Initial public and defence investment. Later, private market application. The USSR mostly lacked the latter, though.
USSR copied OS/360 not because of military's requests, but because it lacked computers for civil applications and lacked software for it. OS/360 was never a military project in USA.
So we had to invest all the available resources into developing a technology that would protect us from US nuclear strike.
Although I agree that in many (but not all) cases USSR tried to copy western technology and goods, Tu-144 is a bad example as it had flown 2 months before the Concord, so it clearly couldn't be a copy of Concord.
It wasn't about protection of USSR, it was about exporting communism to other countries.
Trying to weigh what state did more damage is not a useful metric. Recognising specific damage _is_ useful.
Here's an example of really bad stuff by the USSR government I'm intimately familiar with. Friends had their relatives deported to Siberia by the USSR. Twice. This happened during both USSR occupations of Latvia, in 1941 (before the nazis arrived) and 1949 (right after they were kicked out). Some of them died. Some people I've met now in their sixties were born in a Siberian gulag in the mid-1950's. They were not alone to suffer. A bit over 2% of Latvia's population was deported.
Does any other injustice somehow make that less wrong? No.
And BTW, despite all that, USSR invested a lot in development of those Baltic states like Latvia. Like really a lot. They were swimming in money compared to RSFSR or other republics (maybe only Georgia had the same level of allowance in the USSR). USSR built industry and power plants there, that they later happily sold for scrap after 1991. And closed fine nuclear power plant built for them by the USSR. Now they have no jobs, population is rapidly declining (during the "awful" USSR times it was growing), they have no energy. Good luck to them.
I think it was a mistake to invest so much in those states, one of the reasons for USSR decline. Russian people worked hard to make those Baltic states happy and now they are the most ungrateful nations saying only dirty words about USSR and Russia. Just as Georgia.
It seems the more you give to people, the more ungrateful they become. Just look at British/USA colonies: they still respect the master. E.g. Japan didn't invite Russia this year for the ceremony on the anniversary of US nuclear bombings. But invited USA. We joked: "Why the didn't invite us, but invited USA that bombed them? Because without USA this ceremony wouldn't even exist in the first place".
In late 80s no one in USSR wanted to choose stuff from Latvia over imported goods. When USSR collapsed Latvia got a lot of non-efficient factories with dated equipment and had to close them and also masses of Russian factory workers who where very hostile to new Baltic states.
Ahem.
I agree, the USSR invested many many helicopters in Afghanistan. Many tanks too! Clearly money well-spent.
What did USA did for Afghanistan besides bombing it into stone age and leaving tons of weapons and deceived people behind?
The Kabul Polytechnic University has remained open since 2002 when the US set up a new government.
Will it last? Who knows. But so far, the US has left a stronger positive legacy than the USSR ever managed.
[1] In Poland, the eastern side of the country is still noticeably less developed, with lower development marking the parts that were in Russian Partition - and that was one of the (on average) best developed regions in Tsardom.
That being said, if teachers found you had a talent for engineering and you weren't from a blacklisted family, your life would be completely owned by the state. You would be brainwashed and manipulated to become the engineer the state wants and then as a reward sent off to a prison city living and working with other engineers for the rest of your life. One mistake, wrong comment about the regime and you would end up in the forest with a bullet in your head. That's why they had some impressive advancements here and there, but in the grand scheme of things USSR was just one big pile of steaming excrement.
USSR wasn't an ideal society, but you're either inventing imaginary horrors or repeating lies invented by somebody else.
Perhaps they meant "closed towns" which have existed even in the late 80s.