During the 60s and 70s cybernetics played a very important role in Soviet Union, to the point at which it attempted to subsume practically all of soviet science. Cybernetics was perfectly compatible with marxist-leninist ideology and the culture of progress. Automation was seen as a step towards communism and post-scarity economics.
During Khrushchev's relaxation of scientific culture, the Council on Cybernetics served as an umbrella organisation for formerly suppressed research, including such subjects as non-Pavlovian physiology ("physiological cybernetics"), structural linguistics ("cybernetic linguistics"), and Lamarckist genetics ("biological cybernetics"). During the 60s, cybernetics entered the soviet mainstream. Pro-cybernetic programmes appeared in Soviet media with 20-minute radio broadcasts, entitled "Cybernetics in Our Lives", a series of broadcasts on Moscow TV, detailing advances in computer technology, alongside hundreds of lectures before various party members and workers on cybernetics. In 1961 the 22. Party Congress of the CPSU decleared cybernetics to be one of the "major tools of the creation of a communist society". Khrushchev declared the development of cybernetics to be an "imperative" in Soviet science. This put cybernetics "in fashion" as many career-minded scientists began using 'cybernetics' as a buzzword and the movement swelled with its new membership.
However, the tactical uses of "cyberspeak" eventually overshadowed the original reformist goals that aspired the first Soviet cyberneticians. The ideas which were once seen as controversial, and huddled under the umbrella organisation of cybernetics, now entered the scientific mainstream, leaving cybernetics as a loose and incoherent ideological patchwork. Some cyberneticians, whose dissident styles had been sheltered by the cybernetics movement, now felt themselves persecuted; cyberneticians such as Valentin Turchin, Alexander Lerner, and Igor Mel'čuk felt the need to immigrate to escape this newfound scientific atmosphere. By the 1980s, cybernetics had lost its cultural relevance.
However, what if it didn't? What if cybernetics remained part of the soviet mainstream? On the contrary, what if cybernetics became even more important, with programs like OGAS (a soviet prototype to the internet, that was meant to automate and streamline economic planning) beeing implemented? In this scenario, the USSR wouldn't have neglected, but offensively embraced the scientific-technical revolution. What implications would this have had on soviet science, culture and society as a whole? How would this affect the Cold War, the other socialist nations and the capitalist camp?
And, last but not least, how can it be done?
Bonus points if there is a revival of constructivist art and architecture (which's esthetics were also directed towards science and progress).
During Khrushchev's relaxation of scientific culture, the Council on Cybernetics served as an umbrella organisation for formerly suppressed research, including such subjects as non-Pavlovian physiology ("physiological cybernetics"), structural linguistics ("cybernetic linguistics"), and Lamarckist genetics ("biological cybernetics"). During the 60s, cybernetics entered the soviet mainstream. Pro-cybernetic programmes appeared in Soviet media with 20-minute radio broadcasts, entitled "Cybernetics in Our Lives", a series of broadcasts on Moscow TV, detailing advances in computer technology, alongside hundreds of lectures before various party members and workers on cybernetics. In 1961 the 22. Party Congress of the CPSU decleared cybernetics to be one of the "major tools of the creation of a communist society". Khrushchev declared the development of cybernetics to be an "imperative" in Soviet science. This put cybernetics "in fashion" as many career-minded scientists began using 'cybernetics' as a buzzword and the movement swelled with its new membership.
However, the tactical uses of "cyberspeak" eventually overshadowed the original reformist goals that aspired the first Soviet cyberneticians. The ideas which were once seen as controversial, and huddled under the umbrella organisation of cybernetics, now entered the scientific mainstream, leaving cybernetics as a loose and incoherent ideological patchwork. Some cyberneticians, whose dissident styles had been sheltered by the cybernetics movement, now felt themselves persecuted; cyberneticians such as Valentin Turchin, Alexander Lerner, and Igor Mel'čuk felt the need to immigrate to escape this newfound scientific atmosphere. By the 1980s, cybernetics had lost its cultural relevance.
However, what if it didn't? What if cybernetics remained part of the soviet mainstream? On the contrary, what if cybernetics became even more important, with programs like OGAS (a soviet prototype to the internet, that was meant to automate and streamline economic planning) beeing implemented? In this scenario, the USSR wouldn't have neglected, but offensively embraced the scientific-technical revolution. What implications would this have had on soviet science, culture and society as a whole? How would this affect the Cold War, the other socialist nations and the capitalist camp?
And, last but not least, how can it be done?
Bonus points if there is a revival of constructivist art and architecture (which's esthetics were also directed towards science and progress).