AHC: Cultivate Soviet Computing Science and Industry

Reading this article and checking out this site got me thinking on how the Soviet Union had no problem with computer manufacturing but sorely lacked in research. But the biggest irony being that they already had someone who pioneered in computer science (Sergey Alexeyavich Lebedev) and even helped design what seems to be the only widely used original design in the USSR (BESM) that upon completion was the fastest computer in Europe. It was even said to calculate orbital parameters in 1 minute as apposed to NASA's IBM mainframe at the time which took half an hour.

So how does the message through to the Politiebureau that Soviet scientists had the right stuff to and need to design all kinds of computers?
 
I don't like bumping but

I found there has been much interest in why the Soviet Union failed in fostering a self-sufficient domestic computer industry. Here is an old CNN article detailing the kind of atmosphere that prevented any collaboration on internal development. How far back, who and what would be the right circumstances to turn that around?
 
For starters, it would be good to somehow neuter or otherwise make the conservatives or hard-liners in the Soviet government irrelevant. You could make Khrushchev less flamboyant and antagonistic to the bureaucracy, or make his time more successful. It's important to set a trend of progress in post WWII USSR because the reemergence of a hard-liner unwilling to compromise or budge like Brezhnev can easily stifle any progressive technologies like computer sciences permanently.

With the right computer management, the Soviet Union could keep its socialism. It just has to come quick enough.
 
Slightly off topi, but I think its worth pointing out, as I see these types of threads somewhat often, that a surviving USSR which relies on computers to maximize its efficiency of production will quickly and increasingly ideologically be a Marxist technocracy, as opposed to Marxist communism.
 
Slightly off topi, but I think its worth pointing out, as I see these types of threads somewhat often, that a surviving USSR which relies on computers to maximize its efficiency of production will quickly and increasingly ideologically be a Marxist technocracy, as opposed to Marxist communism.

The closest any government came to that was the Chilean Project Cybersyn, but linking USSR would have would have been much more daunting linking every city, research facility and major factory spanning an entire continent, including the "secret" ones in Siberia in such a centralized manner. Perhaps microwave transmission but then US intelligence would have a field day listening in.

There also seemed to be a certain predujice among some to an over reliance of automation which was reflected in an old cartoon I found posted on Youtube but can't seem to find again as of yet. But then again the same fears were also found in many American, European and modern Japanese works that helped create the whole cyberpunk genre.
 
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Slightly off topi, but I think its worth pointing out, as I see these types of threads somewhat often, that a surviving USSR which relies on computers to maximize its efficiency of production will quickly and increasingly ideologically be a Marxist technocracy, as opposed to Marxist communism.

Could you explore what you mean by "communism" and "technocracy" here at length?

I'm assuming you mean by "communism" what people describe as "actually existing socialism" or "the Soviet style socities". I'm assuming you don't mean Marx's own higher stage of socialism, or a classless society. You need to explore this at length because my reading of "actually existing socialism" follows Djilas' new class thesis or the variety of nomenklatura studies. If you follow a degenerated/deformed workers state hypothesis with a bureaucratic caste; or a state capitalist thesis, then you have a very different view of what "actually existing socialism" was to me. We can't simply assume we both mean the same thing by "actually existing socialism," so it needs exploration.

Similarly with technocracy. I assume you don't mean the specific social formation advocated by the utopian technocratic societies in the 1930s. I assume that you broadly mean a social formation where the elite is primarily selected on a technical basis. Given that the three major views on what actually existing socialism was view the ruling stratum of society as being determined by their economic relation to production or social control, whereas technical selection isn't determined by this depth of economic relationship, you need to explore this further.

If you just mean that the nomenklatura will self-select based on cybernetic management abilities rather than bureaucratic human management abilities… this is a kind of truism, and doesn't cover the deep internecine warfare within the Soviet Union that would accompany a change in the manner of elite selection.

(More interestingly, are cybernetic managers inherently more or less democratic than fordist managers? The answer from the West in firms since the 1970s appear to be "no".)

yours,
Sam R.
 
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