# Talk:History of computing in the Soviet Union

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This review is transcluded from Talk:History of computing in the Soviet Union/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Reviewer: Rosguill (talk · contribs) 22:52, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Hi Rosguill, thank you for taking the time to review the article.
1a: Agreed, I have removed such milestones until enough of them can be gathered for a separate section.
2b: The Fortune source has been replaced by Benjamin Peters' How Not to Network a Nation: it seems that a heavily simplified version of the original proposal was indeed implemented.
4: I still need to do any work on this section, but per capita incomes in the USSR in the early 80s were 85-90% of the Japanese level, and 2 to 3 times higher than South Korea and Taiwan, so I can't agree that the comparison is unfair.--eh bien mon prince (talk) 08:37, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
Noted for the SK and Taiwan comparison. Originally I had based the objection on disparities in foreign investment, not per capita income. That having been said, ultimately no comparison between countries is going to be perfect, so I suppose we can leave it in. Rosguill (talk) 18:13, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
Update about #4: I found two sources, one again lists the lack of market forces as the reason for decline; the other provides a more detailed breakdown but it is from those same Hudson researchers.--eh bien mon prince (talk) 21:00, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
@Rosguill: Hi again! Let me know if further improvements are needed for the GA nomination. Cheers, --eh bien mon prince (talk) 12:53, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
Hi, sorry for the delay. Looking over the article now, it appears to be in good shape and I will change the evaluation status to "pass"

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I think that this page could do with some expansion around the (saratov - capatob) system.
I own the front panel from one of these systems and have done a little research on the equipment (vs PDP8).
It seems strange that no mention of this computer.  If that one - which I know about - is missing, what else is missing?
I dont know enough about the technicals nor the science/political to make any comments.  All I can supply are photographs!  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Iainmaoileoin (talk • contribs) 15:44, 25 December 2018 (UTC) 

Stalin did not oppose computing, he opposed cybernetics, which are two distinct things. Cybernetics, on the one hand, seeks to analyze the universe as a large system containing many smaller machine-like systems (really, it is a metaphysical philosophy). Cybernetics was seen as pseudo-scientific, while on the other hand computing was seen as a useful tool and was supported by the Stalin administration and the press. The provided source for the claim that Stalin "considered the computer an evil product of capitalism" is just an American computing newspaper, which does not support its claim in any way, and which cannot be considered an expert source on the politics of the Soviet Union.
The following quote from anti-communist David Holloway indicates the falsehood of the claim that the USSR under Stalin opposed or suppressed computing:
“In 1960 Academician Berg wrote that ‘it took such a long time to form a sensible attitude to cybernetics that undoubted harm was done to our science and technology ‘… Berg had referred to the way in which the fears of philosophers had held up the development of computer technology; but, as has been mentioned, computer technology was exempted from the initial attacks on cybernetics. In 1949 the first department of Computer Mathematics in the Soviet Union had been set up at Moscow University, and in the following year the Academy of Sciences established an Institute of Precision Mechanics and Computer Engineering. Work on digital computers had begun in the late 1940s, and by 1953 several different computers had been completed.” (David Holloway, Innovation in Science-The Case of Cybernetics in the Soviet Union, p. 312) 132.160.49.90 (talk) 01:17, 2 April 2024 (UTC)