Cybernetics is for sale. Truth and myths about the persecution of cybernetics in the USSR. See what "cybernetics in the USSR" is in other dictionaries
One of the most widespread propaganda myths in Russia today is the myth of Stalin's persecution of cybernetics. It consists approximately in the following. In the West, smart people came up with a new science of cybernetics, but in our country, Stalinist satraps and obscurantists declared it a bourgeois pseudoscience, subjected it to persecution, which had catastrophic consequences and led to a gigantic backwardness of the USSR in the field of computer technology and information technology. The phrase “cybernetics is the corrupt girl of imperialism” often comes up, attributed either to Stalin or Zhdanov, however, some believe that Lysenko called genetics a corrupt girl. Several good articles have already been published that leave nothing of this myth; see, for example, this one: http://www.specnaz.ru/istoriya/408/
These works show that there were no "anti-cybernetic" persecutions, but there were a couple of little-read articles that criticized some philosophical aspects of the new scientific direction and did not lead to any organizational conclusions or prohibitions. Of course, the phrase about the "corrupt girl of imperialism" was invented by some witty Soviet junior researcher already in the Khrushchev thaw times and was never uttered either by Stalin, or Zhdanov, or Lysenko, or about cybernetics, or about genetics .
Moreover, there were already many good materials about the history of the development of computer technology in the USSR, clearly showing that it was in the Stalin years that the first computers, then called computers, were successfully created in our country, and a significant lag behind the Americans in this area began in the late 60s . However, few people described the history of cybernetics in the USSR in the years after the alleged persecution, in the Khrushchev-Brezhnev era. After all, it would be reasonable to expect that when cybernetics was officially recognized in the USSR as a very important and necessary science, after sending gigantic funds and resources there, some great return was received. This is what I want to talk about here.
Let's start with the simplest question: "What is cybernetics?" The answer to this question, however, is not so simple. If you ask this question to a resident of Russia, far from the exact sciences, he would rather answer something like: "Cybernetics is a modern science that explains how to build computers, robots and other smart machines." He will probably classify everything related to programming as cybernetics. A person who has received a good Soviet technical or physical and mathematical education will say that the father of cybernetics was the famous American scientist Norbert Wiener, who introduced this term in his book "Cybernetics" published in 1948, which laid the foundations of a new science. Cybernetics, on the other hand, was defined by Wiener as the science of control and communication in systems of a very different nature, including technical and biological ones. That is, there is some gap between the scientific definition of cybernetics and the idea of it in the mass consciousness. As will be shown below, this is by no means accidental.
In 1958, Wiener's book was published in our country and immediately became unusually popular. In the late 1950s and 1960s, there was a real cybernetic boom in the USSR. Like mushrooms after rain, research institutes, faculties of universities, laboratories, departments, departments, scientific journals, scientific councils appeared, in the names of which there was the then super fashionable word "cybernetics" in a variety of combinations: technical cybernetics, mathematical cybernetics, theoretical cybernetics, technological cybernetics, economic cybernetics, chemical cybernetics, legal cybernetics, etc., etc. Hundreds of thousands of researchers and teachers were involved in this area. What was this gigantic army doing?
The boundaries of the new science were very vaguely defined. If you read the Soviet literature of those years, then the task was to create a new fundamental science, as important and universal as physics. It was assumed that this science would formulate the universal laws of analysis and synthesis of complex systems of very different physical nature and would play the most important, determining role in scientific and technological progress. It has often been suggested that the concept of information will be as important in the new science as the concept of energy in physics. In fact, in general, several specific areas were studied, standing on the border of technical sciences and mathematics: mathematical theories of control and signal processing, information theory. Often it included elements of the theory of automata and algorithms (what in the West is usually called "theoretical computer science"), pattern recognition, sometimes even pieces of computational methods or operations research. In general, all these institutes, faculties and departments of cybernetics were engaged in what the Soviet scientific bosses who had knocked them out for themselves were accustomed to doing. Around all this, a gigantic amount of all sorts of trickery arose. For example, among the parasites who lived in the departments of Marxist-Leninist philosophy of technical universities, there were many who wrote all sorts of nonsense on the topic of "philosophical foundations of cybernetics."
The next point is very interesting. If we look at the birthplace of US cybernetics, we see a strikingly different picture. No faculties or gigantic institutes of cybernetics emerged there. There are people involved in the listed areas, but there are not so many of them at all and they are distributed in a thin layer among engineering, computer or mathematical faculties. If, for example, you want to study the theory of control or signal processing at some decent American university, then you will need to take the courses "control engineering" and "signal processing" at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, while there will be no Wiener works in the program there . The word "cybernetics" is in the titles of several scientific journals, but the journals are marginal and of little prestige. Wiener's book and the term cybernetics itself is much less popular in the US than it was here. There are now words cyberspace, cyberterrorism, cybercafe, even cyberpunk, and if you ask the average American about cybernetics, he will answer that it is something about the Internet and virtual reality. But all this has nothing to do with Wiener's ideas.
In other words, cybernetics flourished precisely in the Khrushchev USSR, while in America, for some reason, the attitude towards it was much more restrained.
Let's see what kind of results this science has given. The most important advances in science and technology in the last few decades of the 20th century occurred in the areas of computerization, automation, telecommunications, information technology, and the like. It was here that the most important breakthroughs occurred. Cheap personal computers, embedded microprocessors at every turn, the Internet, mobile phones, etc. - the appearance of all this had huge economic, social, military, propaganda consequences. And it was in this that the USSR lost outright to the West, which played an important role in the collapse of the USSR. At the same time, at the previous stage, the USSR was quite able to withstand competition in the field of fundamentally important technologies of that time - nuclear weapons, nuclear energy, space, rockets. A common view is that the defeat in the field of new high technologies was largely due to Stalin's persecution of cybernetics. In fact, the remarkable achievements in these areas were 99% due to the development of electronics, the improvement of the element base, purely technological things. The contribution of the theoretical, mathematized areas, united in our country under the banner of "Cybernetics", was rather modest. And the ideas of Wiener's book did not have a significant impact on scientific and technological progress at all.
One of the reasons for this defeat of the USSR was the failed scientific and technological policy, which consisted, in particular, in hypertrophied financing of this cybernetics.
I would give here such an analogy. Suppose the construction industry would be organized as follows. There are a huge number of people involved in mathematical modeling of construction work, writing a lot of dissertations, articles, monographs on this topic. Enormous resources are devoted to such third-rate mathematics, often quite far from reality. At the same time, there are absolutely not enough masons, carpenters and plasterers being trained, catastrophically few nails, bricks and cement are produced. This is exactly what the area of high technologies looked like in the USSR in the 60-80s.
For example, in reality, the national economy needed a huge number of programmers. The countless "cybernetic" faculties taught students very little about actual programming, but taught mathematics and all sorts of useless theories. After graduating, these former students quickly forgot all the bullshit that was stuffed into their heads and learned to code on the job. In general, the Soviet cybernetic boom created a huge army of applied mathematicians, whose usefulness for real applications was very doubtful. Pure mathematicians, according to my observations, usually considered them not applied, but simply bad. It is not for me to judge this, but perhaps there was a rational grain in such a point of view.
In short, the problem with cybernetics in the USSR was not that it studied some pseudoscientific things. No, these are all perfectly reasonable and legitimate areas for scientific research. The problem is that they are by no means as important and promising as the leaders of this field in the USSR imagined. Both the fundamental and applied significance of these areas is rather modest, in any case, completely insufficient for the creation of huge institutes and faculties. In my opinion, cybernetics can be regarded as a gigantic scam of the Soviet scientific and technical intelligentsia. The scam was that things that were tertiary were given the status of paramount. And the term "cybernetics" turned out to be amazingly successful for obtaining public funds. Indeed, if you ask for some fairly theoretical area, then they will not give you much. The word "cybernetics" evokes associations with robots, computers and other smart machines, and this can give a lot.
An interesting question is: "Was Norbert Wiener a major scientist at all?" Yes, there was. He was a fairly well-known mathematician (the title of his autobiographical book: "I am a mathematician"), who also solved a number of fairly important applied problems. What really remains of him in science is connected with the terms "Wiener random processes", "Wiener filtration theory". And this was by no means something forbidden or unheard of in the Stalinist USSR - similar results were independently obtained in the same years by the famous Soviet mathematician A.N. Kolmogorov. But Wiener did not become the creator of a new important science. It is my deep conviction that his "Cybernetics" is a weak and not very useful book. It seems to me that Wiener was struck by a disease that I would call the Leo Tolstoy syndrome (an ambitious and ambitious classic of Russian literature, in his old age, also wanted the glory of a great philosopher, and even the founder of a new religion). This disease often afflicts aging professors of great renown when, not content with the honors they have already earned in their fields, they begin to work in some areas that attract much more public attention. Usually, nothing useful comes out of this.
Today, more than 50 years later, we can confidently say that the program for building a new fundamental science proposed by Wiener and picked up in the USSR has completely failed. In 2005, there is nothing like this and is not expected. Cybernetics turned out to be another sixties illusion. The cybernetic myth suited very well the atmosphere of the Khrushchev thaw (“Nine days of one year”, “And apple trees will bloom on Mars”), the emerging subculture of the Soviet research institute. According to my observations, even the legend that Stalin's satraps called cybernetics "the corrupt girl of imperialism" attracted additional attention of Soviet intellectuals to this area. This fact somehow exalted them in their own eyes.
Cybernetics really turned out to be pseudoscience, but by no means bourgeois, but purely Soviet, very characteristic of the Khrushchev-Brezhnev USSR.
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But nothing gave a solution to the main problem: the metal monsters were still nothing more than machines requiring human control.
And then a new “science” arose, the so-called “cybernetics”. If it is impossible to carry out the “dream” in practice, then it is impossible, um, to make it serve at least the purposes of propaganda? If it is impossible to give a robot the properties of a human mind, then is it possible to convince the person himself that he can be replaced by a robot.
In the United States, there are now a number of the most "precise" definitions of the meaning and goals of the notorious cybernetics. But, in fact, they have always consisted and consist in masking the failures of the creators of "thinking" machines, wishful thinking, speculating on the actual achievements of modern technology for the most unbridled and deceitful imperialist propaganda.Cybernetics has also been criticized for being overly mechanistic in its approach to managing various systems, regardless of their complexity.
Cybernetics is thus a reactionary mechanistic theory, striving to throw modern scientific thought, based on materialistic dialectics, far back - to mechanistic philosophy, obsolete and refuted more than a hundred years ago.
Nevertheless, computer technology in the USSR developed rapidly. In 1950, the MESM (Small Electronic Computing Machine) was launched - the first computer in the USSR, developed by the laboratory of S. A. Lebedev on the basis of the Kiev Institute of Electrical Engineering of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, and in 1952 - BESM-1. In 1950-1951, the M-1 computer was developed at the Laboratory of Electrical Systems of the Energy Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences under the guidance of Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences I. S. Bruk. In 1953, mass production of the Strela computer began, developed at SKB-245 under the leadership of Yu. Ya. Bazilevsky and B. I. Rameev.
High-speed electronic calculating machines were considered primarily as a "big calculator" for conducting volumetric calculations in the electric power industry, ballistics, and the strength of materials, including the nuclear and space industries. The need to develop proper computing technology was not denied. Methods of computational mathematics were developed.
Needless to say, mathematical machines, which make it possible to perform the most complex computational operations with great speed, are of tremendous importance for many areas of science and technology. An outstanding role in the development of machine mathematics belongs to well-known Russian scientists - P. L. Chebyshev, A. N. Krylov, and others. Soviet scientists are constantly improving mathematical machines. One of the highest achievements in this area are automatic, high-speed electronic calculating machines of the Soviet design.
... The use of such computers is of great importance for the most diverse areas of economic construction. The design of industrial enterprises, residential high-rise buildings, railway and pedestrian bridges and many other structures requires complex mathematical calculations that require highly skilled labor for many months. Computers facilitate and reduce this work to a minimum. With the same success, these machines are used in all complex economic and statistical calculations ...
The greatest rejection was caused by cybernetics as invading the "holy of holies" of the ruling apparatus - the management of the state [ ] .
Despite the rejection of A. I. Kitov’s large-scale project, the ideas and proposals contained in it had a serious impact on subsequent proposals for the EGSVTs (1964) and the All-State Automated System (OGAS, 1980) and formed their basis. These proposals were worked out in the USSR by a number of institutes under the scientific guidance of Academician V. M. Glushkov.
Question. Did you find during your last trip to Russia that the Soviets attach great importance to the computer?
Answer. I'll tell you how big. They have an institute in Moscow. They have an institute in Kyiv. They have an institute in Leningrad. They have an institute in Yerevan, Armenia, Tbilisi, Samarkand, Tashkent and Novosibirsk. They may have others.
Question. Do they use this area of science to the fullest, compared to us?
Answer. The general opinion - and it comes from a variety of people - is that they lag behind us in equipment: not hopelessly, but a little. They are ahead of us in developing the theory of automation...In November 1962, President of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR M.V. Keldysh introduced
Cybernetics and genetics are corrupt girls of imperialism Cybernetics. I first saw this word in the magazine "America", which began to be published for the USSR for a short time, immediately after the war, based on still fresh memories of the alliance. The magazine was a miracle, how attractive. Glossy paper of extraordinary whiteness. Drawings and photographs are bright, distinct, beautiful. I, a younger schoolgirl, did not want to let him out of my hands. I've never seen anything like this. The content of the magazine was clearly not aimed at children, but I read it. I remember two articles. One is about the all-powerful science of cybernetics, which makes it possible to make extraordinary calculations and control all kinds of technical devices. The other is a conversation with a resident of some southern American state. He explained that he loves his state because it is always warm there, and he can save on warm clothes and heating. Such a down-to-earth approach to patriotism really surprised me. Recently, at school, a teacher asked the class a question - what is the name of a person who loves his homeland. We all agreed with our classmate that such a person is called a Hero of the Soviet Union. The teacher was surprised, don't you love your Motherland? To answer this question in the negative would be untrue. But "Love for the Motherland" seemed such a sublime, mystical concept that we did not dare to speak about it to insignificant small creatures like us. Then the concept of "patriotism" was named - this is love available to everyone. But still, to love the Motherland, for the fact that you can save ..., it was new. But the word cybernetics has remained alluringly attractive for many years. The magazine "America" disappeared from my life and from the life of all citizens of the USSR. It was replaced by the cold war with the exposure of the intrigues of the vile imperialists. Already in the student years, Marxists-Leninists explained to us that there is such a pseudoscience of cybernetics, the "corrupt girl of imperialism", which, along with genetics, was created in order to distract the working people from the class struggle. These lectures brought discord into my young soul and forever gave rise to skepticism. While heated debates were going on in the USSR, often with organizational conclusions, on the topics of sciences and pseudosciences, computer technology developed and grew stronger, and we practiced calculations in a column. My work in the expedition of the Central Institute was connected with mass measurements and their processing. Gathering several hundred people for episodic field work was a simple matter. An announcement was made in the newspaper: “Strong, brave, dexterous, our institute is waiting for you to work in such and such a region of our country. .. "And they felled - criminals and semis, people hiding from the army or alimony, half-crazy and just romantics. After the end of the field work, the most odious contingent was eliminated, and someone remained for processing. During its prosperity, the institute numbered one and a half - two "Thousands of people. And everyone counted. The expedition members were sitting in the red corner. This is a huge building on Vasilyevsky Island, once owned by a merchant of the first guild. The building of "good bloods". It was built by Stackenschneider or someone from his school. Facing with red glazed brick , in the center of the facade there is an elegant bay window. The main rooms were occupied by the directorate and near-administrative services - the scientific secretariat, accounting. Tall windows, stucco, mirrors in the white assembly hall, creating an endless reflection in each other. Here were the defense of dissertations, academic councils, holidays, solemn funerals Cupids looked at all this - putti and graceful female heads. During defenses and councils, all the walls were hung with visual material - posters on paper sheets, maps, graphs. During funerals, the mirrors were hung with cloth, and the endless perspective disappeared. Festive events were usually accompanied by an indispensable report on the economic and political situation, and then the yellow crepe curtain was pulled back and the concert began. So it was until the curtain was stolen and it was noticed only when someone wanted to move it. Similarly, massive bronze candelabra have disappeared from the director's office, where the respectable carved furniture of the former owner of the office has been preserved. This was noticed by the cleaning lady, sometimes wiping the dust off them. Everything that disappeared disappeared forever and anonymously. The Red Corner was once the home's owner's library. Semi-dark, because the elegant bay window was separated and used for the local committee. The walls of the red corner, lined with oak panels, were hung with portraits of the founders. Thank God, not Marxism-Leninism, but our science. During the expeditionary rush, several dozen tables and chairs were set up and "strong, brave, dexterous" began to count. In specially printed forms of measurement books, these data were added up, multiplied, shared. As "aerobatics", the square root was sometimes extracted. The graphs were compressed, expanded in order, in the end, to turn into the final result. As means of processing were used mainly, office accounts. The sound of knuckles hung in the air. Some operations were carried out on a slide rule, which gave no more than two decimal places. If more accurate calculations were needed, adding machines of the Felix brand were used, a miracle of domestic technology that emitted the grinding of teeth of numerous gears. A foreign sample of this miracle machine, which dates back to the middle of the 19th century, I saw much later in the Museum of the History of Technology in Bonn. All calculations were carried out "in two hands", that is, they were completely checked, and each checked stage was decorated with a "tick" drawn in a different pencil. Numerous charts were made. On a graph paper with a horizontal time axis and all sorts of vertical parameters. Then everything was compared according to the principle "what, where, when?". To build these graphs, again through the newspaper, "tenth graders without triples" were invited. It was in the city of Valdai, where our data was being processed at one of the institute's production bases. Tenth-graders were sitting without work and the opportunity to somehow use themselves, so they willingly responded and easily mastered our science. However, one of them could not take it into her head that time invariably flows only in one direction, and put the next point, as God puts on the soul. Having signed my pedagogical helplessness, I called for help from a student of the Herzen Institute, a future teacher, who for some reason lay low in this quiet provincial town. Two hours later, I could see from his crimson face that he, too, was not omnipotent. Then it turned out that the girl had been ill with something like meningitis. And cybernetics, having changed its disgraced name to informatics, developed in our country as well. My school classmate Galya G., who was clearly deprived of mathematical abilities by fate, somehow after graduation from school I met me at a bus stop, where she thoughtfully drew some signs on the window of an uninhabited semi-basement. After an exchange of questions about who entered where, she told me - do not fall in surprise, I entered Matmeh. There was something to fall off. Every time Galya was called to the blackboard in a math class, the whole class suffered because she did not understand something fundamental. A conscientious, kind girl, aroused universal compassion. And here it is! Meeting her much later, I learned that she not only graduated from the university, but also successfully works as a programmer. During the years of our admission to the university, a new specialty was opened at the Mathematics of the University - applied mathematics. Few people knew what it was, and politics, apparently, played a role. That's where Galya came in. And then, when life put everything in its place, Galya turned out to be the owner of a very sought-after profession. Awareness of the need for progress reached the minds of our Moscow bosses. From some point on, grinding iron devices, weighing at least half a ton each, were installed in a special room of the institute, designed to read information from punched cards with graphic marks. Actually, these were not yet punched cards, but cardboard forms, on which, with the help of a pencil, data was entered in the binary number system. The task of converting each number to the binary system was assigned to the engineer. This meant renouncing the outside world and entering some other world, where everything was broken down to the binary level of "yes - no." I do not know who was the inventor of this miracle of technology, but the futility of such an occupation was obvious to anyone who was not crazy. All-conquering progress marched through the world. I don't know what Bill Gates was doing at that moment, but it has already become clear to politicians that computers - electronic computers are a strategic commodity that should in no case be plying through the iron curtain. Soviet technicians zealously set to work in order to catch up and overtake. Ural-4 was invented - a miracle flashing with numerous lamps, occupying a hall with an area of at least one hundred square meters. Not every institution could afford such a technique. Ours - rented time in two organizations, on the Vyborg side and on the Petrograd side. During the day there was preventive maintenance, in the morning and in the evening they counted "ours", and tenants, like us, received their half an hour or an hour somewhere from two to three in the morning. What was it like walking from the Vitebsk railway station, where I lived then, at night for five or six kilometers! But science requires sacrifice. The work on the computer was preceded by the stage of data preparation. They were printed on punched cards and depicted as holes in certain numerical registers in binary and octal systems. The puncher gnashed, beat with current, jammed the cards, and yet created a cardboard deck, where there was everything that, according to the program, was intended to be entered into the computer. Checking the entered was carried out with the help of a "reader" - a colored punch card, which, at the cost of applied intelligence, made it possible to return to the familiar decimal world. This is how more than one dissertation was made. Moreover, the standard phrase "calculations are made on a computer" provided the dissertation student with invariable success. The technology remained at the cave level, but the inflamed imagination of the authorities ascended to the level of creating automated processing systems and automated control systems (ACS). Journal articles about Norbert Wiener, undercover data about what is being processed somewhere, turned heads and prompted them to run ahead of the unhurried engine of computer technology. Thousands of specialists were involved in all industries. A tribe of homegrown programmers arose who studied programming languages - Algol, Fortran and Basic. All those who did not take place in the profession went to programmers. Each programming language was focused on a certain type of computer. And the masterpieces of that time were Minsk-22 and Minsk-32. Then the idea of automated maintenance of the State Water Cadastre was born. The idea is healthy in its essence, it caused in the bureaucratic environment the need to create numerous documents, starting with the definition of the water cadastre as a systematized set of information about rivers, canals, lakes and reservoirs. Sluggish regular processing of data with episodic generalizations, timed to coincide with the epoch-making events of the industrial upsurge and political repressions of the 1930s and the post-war economic excitement of the 1950s and 1960s, was replaced by a rigid system of regularity. Algorithms were developed - logical and mathematical schemes for handling data, programs, layouts of publications. Strange questions arose: what was clear to anyone, even a non-specialist, turned out to be absolutely inaccessible to the machine. So, it turned out that the Minskys are not able to separate the integer part of the number from the fractional part using a comma. I had to issue a comment to the cadastral publications regarding the accepted arithmetic, like "from now on, call the comma a dot." When creating layouts for traditional publications, a strange question arose - who are our consumers? We used to think that everyone who needs information about the waters. And if you introduce a fee for information, then maybe no one. The idea of ordinary actions as a system led to the difficulty of mutual understanding. The introduction of certain provisions into the heads of the authorities, which had been formed even before the computer era (the “senior pen”, the one that signs documents) necessitated numerous oral and written repetitions. But when our director, burdened with all possible scientific diplomas, issued the sacramental triad "algorithm - program - printout", we almost sobbed with delight. At this time, several highly qualified university mathematicians-programmers appeared at the institute, who worked part-time in several organizations and simultaneously carried out "educational program" among employees. Working with them, for the first time, I appreciated the impeccable logic of thinking, the unambiguous interpretation of concepts, bringing each thought to its natural end, probing each dead-end version for its timely cutting off. It was a contrast to the long-winded chaotic thinking that used to be, the reticence of certain provisions, and the intuitive vague expression. During the production meetings with network workers, those who should directly maintain the cadastre, some pitfalls of a political nature came to light. For me, as a hydrologist, it was obvious that the materials on the river should be considered as a whole, regardless of which state it flows through. This caused a strong rebuff from the workers of the republican departments. They professed an exclusively territorial principle of division. The Balts were especially irreconcilable, through whose territory not a single river flows completely. It was in the 70s, twenty years before the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the end, if not an automated processing system, then at least a semi-automated one was created. Somewhere a specialist had to wedge in and make a decision or push through some completely subjective step. They joked that now there are specialists in the cadastre, it would be good if there were specialists in the cadastre answers. But the joys were short-lived. There was a rumor, which turned out to be a reality, that Minsk-32 is being dismantled and automation at the level of Computing Centers is ending. These were already the 1990s, the years of the collapse of the country, the collapse of the hydrological network, the collapse of institutions, the confusion and vacillation of the entire public sector, pluralism in almost every head. It was a natural end to the voluntaristic delirium, when, according to the Decrees of the Party and the Government, crops were to be harvested, prepared for winter, and automated systems were created. Homegrown, hopelessly backward technology did not make it possible to build any rational system. Any embryo must exist for a certain time in solitude and in its natural development. Only after making sure of its viability, it is possible to make plans for its further use. The tendency to wishful thinking led to the massive introduction of poor technical means, the employment of numerous specialists in a business that was obviously doomed to failure, the generation of illusions of technical progress and engagement in a serious business. The energy, the life of a whole generation of specialists was spent on this. Working with salaries deferred for months, a new reorientation to equipment already bought abroad, led to the outflow of many well-formed specialists in the field of trade, politics, contractual, really paid jobs. Remained the most persistent. Their share fell to the development of a processing system without excessive centralization, on modern PCs (personal computers), capable of developing using everything previously developed. The trial and error method has finally entered the positive phase of taking into account world experience. And then the catch-up began, at the speed of Achilles, who, according to the condition of a well-known problem, will never be able to catch up with the tortoise. oboguev: the Internet as a pseudoscience and a servant of imperialism Kitov was actually a pioneer for the USSR of cybernetics and the existence of Wiener. ... He finally played with the servant of imperialism and lost his revolutionary vigilance, after ...
MATI - Russian State Technological University
named after K.E. Tsiolkovsky. Moscow, Russia
Report at the SORUCOM-2014 conference (published with the permission of the author)
Reefs of Myths: Towards the History of Cybernetics in the Soviet Union
MATI - Russian State Technological University. Moscow, Russia
Keywords Keywords: cybernetics, anti-cybernetic campaign, myths in the history of science, Norbert Wiener, AI Kitov, Arnosht Kolman.
Any science is characterized by both the struggle of different directions and schools (none of which usually has a monopoly on the truth), and the periodic change of the research paradigm. At the same time, Soviet ideology claimed to be unique in the world of ideas and solely scientific. This could not but lead to constant conflicts between scientists and ideologists, manifested, in particular, in various ideological pogrom campaigns (often softly referred to in the literature as “discussions”) directed against a particular science as a whole or a separate scientific direction.
A lot has been written about the history of cybernetics in the USSR - both the memoirs of the direct participants in the events and the works of researchers (see, for example, ). Perhaps of particular interest is the earliest period - before 1955, when the first positive publications on cybernetics appeared in the USSR. Polar opinions are expressed in the literature about the essence of the events taking place at that time, many issues related to this period remain the subject of acute controversy. Was N. Wiener's book available to Soviet scientists; whether there was an anti-cybernetic campaign, and if so, when, who initiated it and what were its consequences; how the rehabilitation of cybernetics began - the answers to these and some other questions are still often determined not by documented facts, but by the myths prevailing in the mass consciousness.
In this work, we will try to briefly characterize the nature of the anti-cybernetic campaign of 1950-1955, as well as point out some contradictions and anachronisms in the information cited in the literature.
1. When did Soviet scientists read Norbert Wiener's book?
In 1948, the book Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, by the outstanding American mathematician Norbert Wiener, was published in Paris, marking the emergence of a new science. In the West, it became a bestseller and created a sensation not only in the scientific world, but in society as a whole. Since Wiener's book did not contain any obvious "anti-communist attacks", soon after its appearance, several copies, through quite official channels, ended up in the Soviet Union - both in the libraries (Lenin, Foreign Literature, various research institutes and design bureaus), and to some scientists who had the right to buy scientific literature abroad. In particular, it is known that I. S. Bruk and V. V. Solodovnikov had it.
So, M.P. Gaaze-Rapoport recalled that “ Wiener's book was inaccessible to the scientific community: some scientists had several copies of it. Suffice it to say that one of the first Soviet cybernetics and an active propagandist of the ideas of the science of managing and processing information, I. A. Poletaev, got acquainted with Wiener’s work from a copy that I. S. Bruk had» .
However, it soon became even more difficult to get acquainted with the book: it was placed in the special libraries of libraries. The very fact of the removal of the book from free circulation can hardly be called into question. For example, G. N. Povarov wrote: “ After graduating from the university (in 1950 - V. Sh.) I served in the army in the officer rank. And he studied at the continuous graduate school of the Institute of Automation and Telemechanics<…>I asked the librarian of the military unit to get us this book. It turned out that in Leninskaya she was in a special fund and it was necessary to write a special attitude» . It is worth clarifying that the author was demobilized from the army in 1953.
Now far from any scientist could get acquainted with Wiener's book, even from among the employees of the organizations in which the book ended up. In particular, A. I. Kitov met her in the secret library SKB-245 in 1951 or (more likely) 1952. Although he was at that time the representative of the Ministry of Defense in SKB-245, a petition from the Chief Marshal was required to obtain a special permit. artillery N. N. Voronov. In the same way, the philosopher and ideologist Ernest (Arnosht) Kolman gained access to the book with difficulty. According to him, he first heard about the new science during a vacation on the Black Sea in the summer of 1953 from his friend, V. N. Kolbanovsky, who was writing an anti-cybernetic article just at that time. Upon returning to Moscow, Kolman " decided to get acquainted with cybernetics, but in the largest Soviet library, the Lenin Library in Moscow, Wiener's fundamental work was listed in the libri prohibiti list, along with all the works of Einstein and many others. The librarians couldn't let me read it. Therefore, I sent a letter of protest to one of the secretaries of the Central Committee of the CPSU, and, to my amazement, I was admitted to all these works.» .
However, for the "initiates" Wiener's book was still available. Moreover, since not all of them had a sufficient command of English, translations into Russian were made. Namely, translations, since they were not made centrally, but on a local initiative, on someone's order. Such translations are often mentioned in memoirs. For example, Yu. A. Schrader writes:
« By the way, about Wiener's book. I remember exactly that in 1949 the translation of this book was kept in SKB-245, where I worked, in the first department. I was once given this translation to read under great secrecy, because then I did not have access (probably, the author means access to this book, and not access to the form - V.Sh.). The translation was monstrous, made by an ignoramus. I remember this unfortunate man, an old pensioner who worked as a translator in the Special Design Bureau and did special translations. He made a crazy mess out of Wiener's text. Nevertheless, this meaningless translation was kept under strict confidence, I don’t know under what neck, I won’t lie.
In 1950, I worked for IS Bruk for 3 months, and Isaak Semenovich expressed to me the ideas from this book, evaluating them very positively, but not very accentuated mentioning where he takes them from. Out of caution, I somehow did not disclose the source, which you can understand» .
And here is another testimony of the memoirist, famous writer, dissident Lev Kopelev, who in the post-war years was a prisoner of the Marfinskaya sharashka:
« Together with a prisoner-engineer B., I translated Wiener's book "Cybernetics". He translated those pages, the mathematical meaning of which I simply could not comprehend, and edited everything I translated.
Our press has declared cybernetics a reactionary pseudoscience. Anton Mikhailovich was not embarrassed:
“Well, that seems to be correct. Reactionary so reactionary. But technically it is necessary to use. We did not doubt the reactionary nature of the German fascists, but nevertheless we fired at them from their own cannons... How should one pronounce: cybernetics or cybernetic? An intelligent beast this American. However, he seems to be an Austrian Jew? The Yankees appropriated him in the same way as Einstein and Bohr. And they got a lot of profit. The atomic bomb was created mainly by immigrant scientists ... But you and I must outdo the overseas wise men, outplay them ... Yes, sir, and not with the help of a native club. It was in the old days that a club was still somehow suitable against an Englishman-sage. My grandfather, I remember, used to say: "Everything an Englishwoman is shitting ..." But you have to compete with the Yankee gentlemen in a different way, in a new way.» .
A. I. Solzhenitsyn also mentions the Kopel translation in the novel “In the First Circle”: “ The latest American magazines reached Marfin, and recently translated for the entire Acoustic Rubin, and besides Roitman, several officers were already reading about the new science of cybernetics».
However, it should be said that if the very fact of the translation is beyond doubt, then the monologue cited by Kopelev in 1949 was hardly possible - at that time in our country cybernetics was not yet declared a pseudoscience ... For the same reason, I. S. Brook hardly in 1950 Mr. had to try to "hide the source" of the ideas expressed. And here, naturally, problems arise, connected both with the aberration of the memory of memoirists, and with their deliberate distortion of the events of the past in favor of one or another ideological postulates.
We continue to quote the memoirs of G. N. Povarov: “ I asked the librarian of the military unit to get us this book. It turned out that in Leninskaya she was in a special fund and it was necessary to write a special attitude. Later it turned out that it was a local initiative. And in the Library of Foreign Literature, "Cybernetics" by Wiener was issued freely. There I read it. It was somewhere in 1952-1953. Those. there was no general censorship ban on this book» .
The last statement of G. N. Povarov seems extremely doubtful. Moreover, in this July 17, 1996 - i.e. a few years before the publication of the cited work - an interview with the researcher of the history of Soviet cybernetics Slava Gerovich, G.N. Povarov confidently stated that Wiener's book was placed in a special depository after and in connection with the appearance of B. Agapov's article in Literaturnaya Gazeta. Since this article was indeed the first public signal for the beginning of the defamation of cybernetics, such a connection seems quite possible. But the transfer of books to the special depository was carried out solely on the basis of the lists sent by Glavlit to all the libraries of the country, so there could simply be no talk of any local initiative to ban it - such an initiative could be punished.
The words of A. V. Shileiko sound even more fantastic: “ It has already become such a common place that cybernetics was often persecuted, cybernetics was not recognized ... Well, what can I say? In SKB-245 where I worked<…>, there was a philosophical seminar. Philosophical seminars in those days, you know, were held under the auspices of the party organization. And at this seminar we studied Wiener's book. This is a fact that you can't get away from. Studied, passed the test» . The study "under the auspices of the party organization" of defamated and forbidden science, of course, cannot be a fact. It seems that the author is either deliberately misleading the reader, or shifting this event from the second half of the 1950s, when such a study really took place in many scientific organizations, to the beginning of the decade ...
But V. A. Torgashev states that “ Wiener's book "Cybernetics", published in 1948, was already translated in the USSR in 1949 (although it appeared on open sale only in 1958 as a result of the second edition, but it was available in libraries earlier)» . In this phrase, we see both the author's cunning and outright fraud. What does "second edition" mean? A self-made translation stored in a special depository is not edition. What does the word "open sale" mean? Do they mean that there was a “closed” sale before that? Finally, in which libraries (except for the already mentioned secret libraries at the Research Institute) and in what form was the book available “previously”? After all, there was no printed edition in Russian until 1958.
So, the myth that until the mid-1950s. Wiener's book was quite accessible to Soviet scientists, and that anyone could get acquainted with it, does not stand up to verification of facts. The return of the book to the general public is connected with the activities of A. I. Kitov, A. A. Lyapunov and their colleagues, which culminated in the official rehabilitation of cybernetics. However, another myth that exists in literature is associated with this event. In a journal article published after leaving for the West, A. Kolman wrote about how he managed to read Wiener's book thanks to the intervention of an unnamed secretary of the Central Committee. But in a memoir book that was published only five years later, he told the same story in a slightly different way - much more extensively and in much more heroic tones:
« And as soon as we returned to Moscow (after a vacation at sea - V. Sh.), I wanted to get acquainted with Wiener's book. But, alas, it was not given out in the Lenin Library, it was in "closed storage", along with anti-Soviet literature. And then I got acquainted with other Soviet authors who nailed cybernetics to the pillory of anti-Marxism and ideological sabotage.
In Litgazeta, the nimble journalist Agranovsky, even earlier than Kolbanovsky, dealt with her no less bitingly. And the Concise Philosophical Dictionary, which appeared in these years in many editions under the editorship of Yudin and Rosenthal, did not do better with it. I discovered that all the works of Einstein were classified in the Lenin and other libraries (after all, Soviet philosophers led by Maximov declared the theory of relativity idealistic in the 1950s!), and the same fate befell many other most valuable works of foreign scientists. Then I wrote a letter to the Secretary of the Central Committee, Pospelov, pointing out the harm that this practice of Glavlit was doing to Soviet science. And, knowing what Pospelov is, I, to tell the truth, did not expect that my letter would be received positively. But, contrary to my expectation, the works of Wiener, Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg and a number of other Western scientists were declassified very quickly. I began to carefully study Wiener's "Cybernetics", and became convinced of the greatest value, the extraordinary prospects of this new science.» .
There are many factual errors in this passage - for example, Kolman confused Yaroshevsky with Agranovsky, the Concise Philosophical Dictionary gave a negative assessment of cybernetics not in the summer of 1953, but a year later ... Kolman does not say when the ban on the books he named was lifted, but in In any case, there is not the slightest reason to associate this event exclusively with his letter to the Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU G.N. Alas, some authors, taking on faith the unsupported by facts version of the exceptional role of A. Kolman in the rehabilitation of cybernetics, do not even mention the role of A. I. Kitov, A. A. Lyapunov and other Russian scientists in this (see, for example, ).
2. Was there an anti-cybernetic campaign?
Soon after the publication of Wiener's book, many publications (including popular ones) appeared in the West, in which the scientist's ideas about the fundamental similarity of the behavior of living organisms and complex technical systems were especially emphasized. Probably, it was this aspect of Wiener's theory that first of all attracted the attention of Soviet ideological authorities and demanded an appropriate response.
In early May 1950, an article by Boris Agapov "Mark III, Calculator" appeared in Literaturnaya Gazeta. In it, the idea of using computers to process economic information was sharply criticized, and an impartial assessment of Wiener's personality was also given. And although the very word cybernetics was not mentioned in the article, it can be considered a harbinger of the anti-cybernetic campaign. However, it should immediately be said that this campaign was of a completely unusual nature - unlike the pogrom campaigns in economics, genetics, linguistics and other sciences, it was preventive. If in these sciences the blow was directed against specific people, scientific teams and schools that had developed within the traditional sciences, then in the campaign against cybernetics the situation was completely different. After all, neither cybernetics nor cybernetics have yet appeared in the country!
Therefore, it seems wrong to equate the large-scale campaign against genetics, which had such a dramatic, and sometimes tragic for the fate of many scientists, and outwardly modest anti-cybernetic campaign. It is precisely the often and thoughtlessly repeated words about the persecution of "genetics and cybernetics" that give rise to individual publicists and memoirists to deny the very existence of this campaign and to scoff at "ten thousand executed cyberneticians and one hundred thousand sent to Kolyma". For example, A. V. Shileiko writes: " It has already become such a common place that cybernetics was often poisoned, cybernetics was not recognized ...<…>Maybe I'm so lucky, but I don't know a single person who would suffer from the fact that he proclaimed cybernetics. Let's say I'm lucky» .
Of course, no cybernetics were exiled to Kolyma, if only because no one in the USSR called himself a cybernetician! – but there was certainly a campaign against cybernetics. Although, as already mentioned, the campaign is peculiar. It was not large-scale - only about ten publications. But at the same time, it should be borne in mind that in the USSR there was an unspoken rule - criticism of this or that “ideologically alien” phenomenon was strictly dosed. Indeed, if you write too much about him, then the reader may involuntarily have an interest in him and a desire to get acquainted. The campaign was not supposed to be massive, but every shot had to hit right on target. The choice of printed media in which anti-cybernetic articles were published is characteristic and hardly accidental. First, two publications in the Literaturnaya Gazeta, oriented towards the intelligentsia (it is hardly worth mentioning the special role of this publication in the ideological life of the USSR). Then, one after another, articles in the mass popular science magazines "Nature", "Science and Life" and "Technology for Youth". Finally, there is an article in the central ideological organ "Problems of Philosophy" that introduces the "philosophical basis" and an article that claims to be "scientific" in the academic Bulletin of the Moscow University. And as the final chord of the campaign - an article in the "Concise Philosophical Dictionary", giving the final official Marxist-Leninist assessment of the new science. All this clearly testifies to the coordinated campaign in the press.
Some researchers believe that the relatively modest scale of anti-cybernetic speeches does not allow us to call their totality a full-fledged ideological campaign. Thus, the well-known American researcher L. Graham writes: “In the early 1950s, Soviet ideologists were definitely hostile to cybernetics, despite the fact that the total number of articles directly directed against cybernetics did not seem to exceed three or four. This number was much smaller than the number of ideologically militant publications that appeared in other disputes ... which is no doubt due to the circumstances of the time: by the time cybernetics became widely known, the worst times of the ideological invasion of Soviet science were over.
Unfortunately, here the author made several mistakes. Firstly, the number of publications directly directed against cybernetics alone was twice as large - as already indicated, no less than nine. Secondly, in the Soviet Union, any publication in the press, and even more so in the central ideological bodies, was considered as a strict guide to action. We can cite the opinion expressed in 1950 by a participant in one of the discussions on the problems of medicine: “If an article ( in the newspaper "medical worker"- V. Sh.) is not placed in a discussion order, then it is customary to look at it as an initial article. And it seems to me that most of the comrades perceived this article as a directive ". So there was simply no need for a large number of publications. And, Finally, thirdly, L. Graham's categorical statement that in the early 1950s "the worst times of the ideological invasion of Soviet science are over" looks extremely naive.
In order to reasonably judge the presence or absence of a campaign, it makes sense to analyze more closely not so much the content of anti-cybernetic articles (S. Gerovich convincingly showed that all of them, except, perhaps, T. Gladkov’s articles, were written on the basis of secondary sources and none of them there is no controversy with cybernetics on the merits), how much the chronology of their appearance and the composition of the authors.
B. Agapov's article "Mark III, Calculator" appeared in Literaturnaya Gazeta in early May 1950. However, the campaign was started by an article by M. Yaroshevsky, published in the same newspaper on April 5, 1952. Three articles followed it in July-August : in the journals "Priroda" (the issue was signed for publication on June 25) and "Technology for Youth" (the issue was signed for publication on July 20) and the newspaper "Medical Worker". If we take into account the length of the editorial and publishing cycle of journals, it becomes obvious that all these articles were submitted to the editors, if not simultaneously, then with a very short interval. Therefore, it is difficult to agree with S. Gerovich's opinion that "the authors of subsequent anti-cybernetic publications clearly interpreted Yaroshevsky's article as a signal to start a full-scale anti-cybernetic campaign" . This statement implicitly assumes the independence and autonomy of the authors of the named articles. Read - Interpret - Respond. We repeat once again that in the USSR articles of an ideological orientation were not a private affair of the authors. The synchronicity of the appearance of these publications in the press rather indicates that their authors did not act on their own initiative, but carried out the order received, so that the signal to them did not come from Yaroshevsky. (By the way, although Yaroshevsky himself said that he wrote his article in an "initiative order", it is much more likely that it was written on the instructions of the newspaper's editors - however, this story deserves separate consideration.)
In 1953, two more articles were also published simultaneously - in the mass popular scientific journal Science and Life and the ideological organ Questions of Philosophy. Of course, this can hardly be considered a coincidence either. And in fact, the campaign ended with an article in the Concise Philosophical Dictionary, which gave the final official Marxist-Leninist assessment of the new science. This book was signed for publication on March 27, 1954, which, again given the length of the journal's editorial cycle, roughly corresponds to the time of writing the last, most "scientific" of the anti-cybernetic articles. Thus, an analysis of the chronology of the appearance of articles directed against cybernetics in Soviet publications clearly indicates the coordinated nature of these publications.
3. Who started and carried out the anti-burning campaign?
Probably, the list of authors of anti-cybernetic publications also testifies to the same. There are frequent attempts to present engineers, mathematicians and specialists in the field of computer development as the initiators, and even authors of these publications. So, L. Graham writes that “ The influence of the party position should not, however, overshadow the fact that many scientists and engineers in the Soviet Union were skeptical of the claims of US cybernetics.» . The Ukrainian publicist V. Pikhorovich echoes him: “ most of all ... those who speculated and continue to speculate on this very dark history (of the anti-cybernetic campaign - V. Sh.) are wrong, claiming that philosophers and ideologists in general were to blame for everything. In fact, everything was completely different. Philosophers and ideologists only picked up the idea thrown by others". By others, he means the creator of the first Soviet computer, academician S. A. Lebedev and his employee E. A. Shkabara: “ It was they who initiated the infamous article in the "Philosophical Dictionary", in which cybernetics is called pseudoscience.”(Unfortunately, V. Pikhorovich does not know the source base well, otherwise he would not have made this accusation ... - see, for example,).
But really, really Philosophers and ideologists in general were to blame". We will give brief information about the authors of anti-cybernetic articles.
Agapov, Boris Nikolaevich(1899-1973). In the early 1920s was a member of the poetic group of constructivists, later switched to journalism and journalism. According to the characteristics of literary historian V. Kazak, “he wrote essays of little interest in the artistic sense on the topics of socialist construction”, “he was engaged in popularization in the party spirit of current events in the field of economics and science.” Agapov was noted for his participation in the odious book "The White Sea-Baltic Canal named after Stalin" (1934) (he owns, in particular, the chapter "Finish off the class enemy", dedicated to the head of construction, Chekist Semyon Firin). Although in 1946 Agapov could have feared disgrace for some time as one of the creators (albeit third-rate ones) of the film Big Life (Series 2), which caused Stalin's sharp discontent and was banned, it is obvious that he was a person who could be trusted with especially responsible and important party assignments. In the same 1946 and 1948, he twice won the Stalin Prize for documentary film scripts. In 1950, Agapov worked as the editor of the science department of Literaturnaya Gazeta (whose place in the ideological struggle is well known).
Bykhovsky, Bernard Emmanuilovich(1901-1980) - a prominent Soviet philosopher and historian of philosophy, one of the most important areas of work of which was the criticism of bourgeois philosophy. The titles of some of his books speak for themselves: "Enemies and falsifiers of Marxism" (1933), "Insanity of modern bourgeois philosophy" (1947) ... Bykhovsky was the editor and most active author of the three-volume "History of Philosophy" (1940-1943), for which others were awarded the Stalin Prize. However, in the secret resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of May 2, 1944 “On Shortcomings in Scientific Work in the Field of Philosophy” (No. 1143/110), he was named one of the culprits for the “incorrect” coverage of German classical philosophy, after which he was removed from post of head sector of the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and removed from the editorial board of the History of Philosophy. At this, Bykhovsky's brilliant administrative career was interrupted: he was sent as an editor in philosophy to the Great Soviet Encyclopedia; from 1953 he worked as a professor at the Plekhanov Institute. In the case of Bykhovsky, it is difficult to say what was more - a sincere rejection of the next bourgeois philosophical perversion, i.e. cybernetics, or the desire to get out of disgrace and earn forgiveness.
Gladkov, Kirill Alexandrovich(1903-1973) - popularizer of science, author of more than ten books, Honored Worker of Culture of the RSFSR. He signed the article as "engineer, laureate of the Stalin Prize." Indeed, in 1952 he was awarded the Stalin Prize of the third degree as the leader of the organization of mass production of a new product. However, according to the testimony of a colleague on the editorial board of the Tekhnika ‒ Youth magazine, in which Gladkov worked from the beginning of the 1950s, before that he was an intelligence officer, performing assignments in Turkey, the USA, England and other countries. The memoirist writes: I do not know what educational institution Gladkov graduated from, but from some point on, all sorts of technical problems began to enter the circle of his official duties. “In the thirties,” he once said, “the mummy of Lenin in the mausoleum began to dry out, and the problem arose of preserving the body of the leader. When lighting specialists Fabrikant and Nilender were asked to produce a batch of such lamps at an electric lamp plant, they were indignant and, saying that they would never allow violating GOSTs, proudly left. Then the authorities issued an arrest warrant to Kirill Alexandrovich, where signatures and seals were already affixed. It only remained to enter the names of those arrested and again invite specialists. “This time the professors turned out to be extremely accommodating,” Gladkov said, “and we settled the matter in a few minutes.”» . A retired professional intelligence officer - there were many of these in Soviet publishing houses and editorial offices. Knowledge of languages, close ties with authorities, which made it possible to obtain information inaccessible to others - all this led some to become scientists (one of the most famous examples is I. R. Grigulevich), some to popularizers of science. Well, the authorities, of course, out of old memory (although, as you know, there are no former spies) willingly entrusted such “journalists” with especially responsible tasks. It is one thing when a philosopher stigmatizes cybernetics, and quite another when an engineer, and not just an ordinary one, but a laureate of the Stalin Prize! There is no need to comment on the methods of work of the "engineer" described above ...
Gladkov, Theodor Kirillovich(1932-2012). In 1955 he graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov. The son of K. A. Gladkov seemed to be an amazingly talented young man. In the year of graduating from Moscow State University, without even defending his diploma, he already publishes an introductory ideological article in a scientific journal. For those years, the case is unprecedented! It can be assumed that the materials for the article were provided to him by his father (more precisely, by the authorities), perhaps, and the article was only signed by him. But in any case, the young graduate of the Faculty of Philosophy did not disappoint, and, naturally, his further career took shape: numerous business trips abroad, including to “hot spots” (Southeast Asia, Africa), several dozen documentary and fiction books about exploits Soviet security officers, illegal intelligence agents and partisans, awarded by the KGB of the USSR, SVR, FSB and other special services, etc. It was these people, if they were not on the staff, then they were certainly non-staff employees of the authorities. The notes that appeared in the press after the death of T.K. But none of them remembered how the creative biography of the future organ singer began ... And none of them remembered his other publications, in which he slandered Soviet dissidents, calling all dissidents agents of the CIA and calling on our most humane court punish traitors to the motherland in the most severe way. As an example, we can mention the essay "Where the 'Search' leads" published in a book with the characteristic title "From someone else's voice" (M.: Moskovsky Rabochiy, 1982).
T. K. Gladkov himself never gave an assessment of these aspects of his multifaceted activities, but it is worth quoting an excerpt from one of his detective stories:
« Semyon Vladimirovich Koritsky, although he became a professor, did not do a single significant scientific work in his entire life. The man is smart, but not talented. Besides painfully selfish.
Professor Koritsky was always promoted due to the fact that he sailed on the wave of the next "revelations" of the next "bourgeois false theory". In those years, it was possible to make not only a professorial career on this. In the fortieth year, Professor Koritsky died of a heart attack, as it was then customary to call myocardial infarction in everyday life. In science, he never accomplished anything, but he managed to educate his son Mikhail in a certain spirit. Koritsky Jr., unlike the elder, was endowed by nature with rich abilities.
From birth, Mikhail was surrounded in the family by an atmosphere of admiration, permissiveness and ambitious hopes for a high-profile career. And he grew up - a talented egoist, deeply convinced of his exclusivity<…> » .
Those. in 1982 (or when this story was written) T. K. Gladkov perfectly remembered how they had made a career thirty years before (and quite rightly noted that “not only a professorial one”). Should this be understood as remorse or remorse? Hardly. Rather, it is an attempt by the subconscious to "crowd out" a long-standing unseemly act. And one more phrase, which also looks quite “according to Freud”: “he never accomplished anything in science, but managed to raise his son in a certain spirit ...” It seems that the winner of many awards, Teodor Kirillovich Gladkov, understood everything about himself and about his dad.
Kolbanovsky, Viktor Nikolaevich(1902-1970) - Soviet philosopher and psychologist. A psychiatrist by education, he graduated in 1932 from the Institute of Red Professors, and very quickly moved into the forefront of the scientific establishment, from 1932 to 1937 holding the post of director of the Institute of Psychology (currently the Psychological Institute of the Russian Academy of Education). According to the memoirs of his colleagues, which belong, however, to a much later time, Kolbanovsky “imposed on himself the duties of a political commissar: he carefully monitored whether the employees deviated from the Marxist-Leninist methodology, whether they succumbed to the influence of bourgeois psychology. But he was not a fanatic, as far as I know, he did not write spiteful reports about his colleagues to higher authorities. But if Kolbanovsky was not a fanatic, then he was also the initiator of the campaign to defeat a number of trends in psychiatry (1937), and an active participant in some other campaigns (in particular, against genetics). In general, after his dismissal from the Institute of Psychology, his scientific career was not very successful (for example, he never managed to get his doctorate). The writing of the article (published under the pseudonym Materialist) could be seen by Kolbanovsky both as the fulfillment of the duty of a Marxist scientist and as another opportunity to draw attention to himself and regain the once lost administrative position.
Yaroshevsky, Mikhail Grigorievich(1915-2001) - an outstanding Soviet psychologist and historian of psychology. In 1938, he was arrested on charges of plotting the explosion of the Palace Bridge in Leningrad and the murder of A.A. Zhdanov. Article 58-8 "Terror" was later changed to 58-10, and after 1.5 years he was released. During the period of the struggle against cosmopolitanism, in 1950, he considered it best to quit the Institute of Philosophy of the USSR Academy of Sciences and leave as a teacher in Tajikistan (this was preceded by an interrogation at the Lubyanka). Yaroshevsky is perhaps the most controversial figure among the authors of anti-cybernetic articles. Fearing for freedom and life, in his time he wrote quite a few works that castigated bourgeois science. His article was by no means the only one, moreover, contrary to the later stories of Yaroshevsky himself, that he heard about cybernetics for the first time only in the spring of 1952 in the editorial office of the Literary Gazette from some “two young physicists”, in fact, he first branded cybernetics in print (albeit in passing, the main target was the so-called "semantic idealism") a year earlier. In the article, he wrote about cybernetics as a “variety of semantics”, stigmatized “obscurantist semanticists” and, as we now understand, Norbert Wiener’s well-founded fear that due to the advent of “thinking machines” many people will not be able to “sell their labor” concluded that "semantics-cannibals" assert "the need to exterminate the greater part of humanity."
Nevertheless, M. G. Yaroshevsky did not become “his own” for the party ideologists: the Central Committee of the CPSU blocked his election to the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences, and he was rehabilitated in the 1938 case only in 1991. At the same time, his later scientific and social activities (for example, he was the editor of the collections "Repressed Science") deserves deep respect.
Thus, the circle of authors involved in writing articles directed against cybernetics is also not accidental. Indeed, there were no engineers or natural scientists among them. All of them were experienced "fighters of the ideological front" - Chekists, philosophers, journalists, who not only constantly appeared in the press, but also took an active part in development campaigns in various sciences. What is especially characteristic, some authors had close ties with the state security agencies (or even were their employees), and, therefore, published their articles as if on “duty of service”, others were either subjected to persecution by the same agencies, or at different times became the object of sharp criticism from party authorities and therefore, perhaps, were forced, working with a pen not only “for conscience”, but also “for fear”, to earn indulgence ... Thus, both the analysis of the chronology of the appearance of anti-cybernetic articles and the study of the very specific composition of their The authors testify to the planned and coordinated nature of these publications rather than spontaneous. That is, that in 1952-1955. indeed, there was an ideological campaign against cybernetics. A possible explanation for the relatively modest scale of this campaign is given in .
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16. Materialist. Who is cybernetics for? // Questions of Philosophy. 1953. No. 5. S. 210-219.
17. Cybernetics // Brief Philosophical Dictionary. M., 1954. S. 236-237.
18. Gladkov T.K. Cybernetics is a pseudoscience about machines, animals, man and society // Bulletin of the Moscow University. 1955. No. 1. S. 57-67.
19. Graham L. R. Natural science, philosophy and science of human behavior in the Soviet Union: Per. from English. M.: Politizdat, 1991. 480 p.
20. Ideology and science (discussions of Soviet scientists in the middle of the 20th century) / Ed. ed. A. A. Kasyan. M.: Progress-Tradition, 2008. 288 p.
21. Gerovitch, Slava. From Newspeak to Cyberspeak. A History of Soviet Cybernetics. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002. 378 p.
22. Petrovsky A. V. Psychology and time. St. Petersburg: Piter, 2007. 448 p.
23. Smirnov G. Special purpose editors // Technology for youth. 2008. No. 7. S. 38-43.
24. Gladkov T., Sergeev A. Lorenz's last action. Tale. M.: Military Publishing House, 1982. 205 p.
25. Antsyferova L. I. Unforgettable warmth of a unique team // Questions of Psychology. 1994. No. 4. S. 40.
26. Yaroshevsky M. G. Semantic idealism - the philosophy of imperialist reaction // in: Against the Philosophizing Squires of American-British Imperialism. Essays on criticism of modern American-English bourgeois philosophy and sociology. Rep. editors: T. I. Oizerman and P. S. Trofimov. M.: Gospolitizdat, 1951. S. 88-101.
27. Kitov, V.A. S.I. Vavilov. Annual Scientific Conference 2011. M.: Janus-K, 2011. S. 539-543.
In the early 1950s, a number of critical articles directed against cybernetics were published in the Soviet press, which gave reason to talk about the existence of persecution of this science. However, at the same time, the Soviet leadership made great efforts to develop computers in the USSR. Where, then, did these critical articles come from? Read about this in the article by the chief specialist of the RGANI (Russian State Archive of Contemporary History) Nikita Pivovarov.
The first decades after the end of World War II were called by contemporaries the “new wave of rationalization” and compared with the Renaissance. The Cold War, the arms race demanded breakthrough discoveries in science. The new system of scientific knowledge was called "cybernetics".
The essence of cybernetics has been interpreted in different ways. Some called it a science that studies mathematical methods and control processes. Others - the science of the transfer, processing, storage and use of information. There were also those who saw the essence of it in the study of ways to create, disclose, structure and identically transform algorithms that describe control processes in reality. Cybernetics was based on the achievements of mathematical logic, probability theory and electronics. It made it possible to identify quantitative analogies in the operation of an electronic machine, the activity of a living organism, or a social phenomenon.
Since the commissioning in 1945 of the first electronic machine - the American "ENIAK" - cybernetics has entered a new phase of development. Mathematical machines have become an important tool of science. They made it possible to perform automatically, efficiently and quickly a large amount of calculations needed in aerodynamics, nuclear physics or artillery. The appearance of this invention was so significant and strategically important that this fact was kept in complete secret at the Pentagon for a year and a half. But as soon as the creation of an electronic machine received publicity, its advantages began to be used precisely in the field of weapons. For example, the American firm "Hughes", one of the pioneers of world electronics. In the late 1940s - early 1950s, she was engaged in the production and implementation of the A-1 electronic sight, which made it possible to solve ballistic tasks related to firing, bombing and missile launch. Sperry designed the equipment for one of the first drones. However, the possibilities of electronics were far from exhausted by its use in the arms race. Pretty soon, the achievements of cybernetics and, first of all, electronic computers, which became its symbol, began to be widely used in science and economics.
Academician Mikhail Alekseevich LavrentievThe USSR did not remain aloof from the latest achievements of science, but its view of the expediency of cybernetics was not immediately established. Thus, in 1948, the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted a resolution on the need for the development of computer technology. However, under pressure from the director of the Institute of Fine Mechanics and Computer Engineering, Academician N.G. Bruevich, the main emphasis was supposed to be placed on the creation of mechanical and electrical computing devices, while the real work on the creation of digital machines was postponed indefinitely 1 . As noted several years later, the future founder of the Novosibirsk Akademgorodok, Academician M.A. Lavrentiev: "Bruevich tried in every way possible for him to direct the efforts of scientific workers to the creation of continuous computers, which objectively delayed the creation of electronic digital machines" 2 .
At the beginning of 1949 M.A. Lavrentiev even addressed a now widely known letter to I.V. Stalin, in which he wrote about the need to accelerate the development of computer technology and its use in the Soviet economy. As a result, in April of the same year, a new resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR "On the mechanization of accounting and computing work and the development of the production of calculating, calculating-analytical and mathematical machines" 3 was approved. In particular, according to this decree, the Academy of Sciences (AN) of the USSR was entrusted with the task of developing schemes for designing mathematical machines 4 .
In 1950, the USSR (MESM) was created in the USSR, which was developed by the laboratory of S. A. Lebedev on the basis of the Kiev Institute of Electrical Engineering of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. Its speed was 50 operations per second.
During 1950 - 1952. The Council of Ministers adopted a number of resolutions, such as, for example, “On the design and construction of an automatic high-speed digital computer” (dated January 11, 1950 No. machines” (dated August 1, 1951, No. 2759), “On measures to ensure the design and construction of high-speed mathematical computers” (dated May 19, 1952, No. 2373) and others.
In 1951, a government commission reviewed sketches of digital computers developed by the USSR Academy of Sciences and the USSR Ministry of Mechanical Engineering and Instrumentation (MMIP). In the autumn of 1952, the BESM-1 (High-speed electronic calculating machine) was put into trial operation, at that time the fastest in Europe (8-10 thousand ops / s). It, like MESM, was created under the leadership of Academician S.A. Lebedev.
At the beginning of 1954, the Strela was published, created by the designer Yu.Ya. Bazilevsky in SKB-245 MmiP. By the middle of the year, the so-called. small electronic machine EV-80 (designer V.N. Ryazankin). And in 1955, another small-sized machine AVTSM-3 was released, designed by corresponding member I.S. Brook at the Energy Institute. Krizhanovsky.
In the early 1950s, the first publications about Soviet electronic technology began to appear. So, in 1951, an extensive article by engineer N.A. Ignatov, which, along with detailed coverage of new Soviet calculating machines, also spoke about the creation of electronic machines. However, the popularization of the topic in popular journals also had negative consequences for the development of cybernetics. In the first half of the 1950s, the Soviet press published a number of articles directed against cybernetics. Here they are:
2. Bykhovsky B.E. Cybernetics - American pseudoscience // Nature. 1952. No. 7.
4. Gladkov T.K. Cybernetics, or longing for mechanical soldiers // Technique of youth. 1952. No. 8.
5. Bykhovsky B.E. The Science of Modern Slave Owners // Science and Life. 1953. No. 6.
6. Materialist (pseudonym). Who is cybernetics for? // Questions of Philosophy. 1953. No. 5.
7. Article "Cybernetics". Brief philosophical dictionary. Edited by M. Rosenthal and P. Yudin. 4th edition, add. and correct. 1954
8. Gladkov T.K. Cybernetics is a pseudoscience about machines, animals, man and society // Bulletin of Moscow University. 1955. No. 1.
Basically, these articles criticized the philosophical theses of cybernetics about the identity of the human mind and a computer, but at the same time, the “anti-cybernetic” articles did not deny the need for the development of computer technology, the introduction of automation into the economy of the USSR. As an example, let's quote from the article "To Whom Cybernetics Serves" .
The propaganda of cybernetics has taken on a large scale in the capitalist countries. Dozens of books, hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles spread misconceptions about the "new science". Since 1944, conferences of cybernetics have been held annually in New York, in which scientists of various specialties actively participate. Conferences of cybernetics also took place in France and England. Even in India, American exporters brought this rotten ideological commodity.The apologists of cybernetics believe that its scope is limitless. They argue that cybernetics is of great importance not only for solving problems related to telemechanics, self-adjusting devices, reactive mechanisms and servomechanisms, but even to such areas of knowledge as biology, physiology, psychology and psychopathology. Enthusiasts of cybernetics admit that sociology and political economy should also use its theory and methods.
What is this new science - cybernetics? In ancient Greek, the word "cybernetos" means helmsman, and "cybernetikos" - able to be helmsman, that is, able to manage. Defining the content of cybernetics, Norbert Wiener stated without undue modesty: "We decided to call cybernetics the entire theoretical field of control and communication, both in a machine and in a living organism."
So, first of all, cybernetics sets itself the task of proving the absence of a fundamental difference between a machine and a living organism. The task, to put it mildly, is ungrateful in the 20th century. But, nevertheless, drawing an analogy between the work of complex computing units containing up to 23 thousand automatically switching radio tubes, cybernetics argue that the difference between the work of such a “smart” machine and the human brain is only quantitative. University of London professor John Young enthusiastically informed the world that "the brain is a gigantic computer containing 15 billion cells instead of 23,000 radio tubes found in the largest computer ever constructed." And this is by no means a metaphor, but a statement that claims to be scientific!
The more circumspect Harvard University professor Louis Radenauer was more careful about this: "The most complex modern computer is at the level of the nervous system ... flatworm."
The essential thing in these statements is not that they note the difference between the number of "reacting cells", but that they ignore the qualitative difference between a living organism and a machine.
In the same article, the benefits of computers are not denied at all:
The use of such computers is of great importance for the most diverse areas of economic construction. The design of industrial enterprises, residential high-rise buildings, railway and pedestrian bridges and many other structures requires complex mathematical calculations that require highly skilled labor for many months. Computers facilitate and reduce this work to a minimum. With the same success, these machines are used in all complex economic and statistical calculations.All these publications gave rise to a number of researchers to assert that in the USSR in the last years of I.V. Stalin, another political anti-scientific campaign was organized, comparable, if not in scale, then in nature to the persecution of genetics. Thus, contemporary authors claim that publications in the Soviet press were coordinated 5 .
B. Bykhovsky's article "Science of modern slave owners" from the journal "Science and Life", No. 6, 1953.However, the myth of the persecution of cybernetics is refuted by the absence of any documents deposited in the funds of the highest party bodies - the Politburo (since the end of 1952 - the Presidium), the Secretariat and the Apparatus (primarily in the departments - propaganda and agitation, science and universities, natural and technical sciences, philosophical and legal sciences, economic and historical sciences) of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks / CPSU. We searched for documents in RGANI (Russian State Archive of Contemporary History) and RGASPI (Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History) that would initiate this company, but not a single such document was found. This allows us to say that these publications in the Soviet press were not initiated by the Soviet leadership. Rather, it can be assumed that the editorial offices of journals, trying to catch the current ideological trends, published articles at their own peril and risk. Those. each such article is an initiative of either the author himself or the editors.
At the same time, if the criticism of the philosophical foundations of cybernetics did not have any negative impact on its development in the USSR, then the publication of E. Obodan's article "Computer Technology in the Service of Technical Progress" 6 had far-reaching consequences. It led to the classification of any developments in this area, and, consequently, the lack of opportunities to conduct open scientific discussions. After the publication of the article, Academician M.A. Lavrentiev and Professor D.Yu. Panov sent a note to the Central Committee. In it, scientists argued that the article could cause a qualified reader to conclude that the Soviet Union lagged behind Western countries in the field of digital technology production by about 10 years 7 . Perhaps the note to the Central Committee is the only document in which not the philosophical foundations of cybernetics were criticized, but texts on computer technology. It is clear that M.A. Lavrentiev and D.Yu. Panov criticized E. Obodan's article for ignorance, for ignorance of how Soviet electronics developed. They, having started this dispute, hoped to acquaint the “general Soviet public” with fundamentally new achievements in the creation of computer technology. However, the note to the Central Committee was used by the Minister of Mechanical Engineering and Instrumentation P.I. Parshin. He also appealed to the leadership of the party, but with a proposal not to publish any mention of computers in magazines and newspapers. As a result, because of E. Obodan's article on electronics, it was forbidden to write until 1955. 8
RGANI. F. 5. Op. 17. D.512. L.25. See the appendix to the article.
The number of computers and their types in the USSR and the USA in 1954. F. 5. Op. 17. D.512. L.29. See the appendix to the article.Another thing is that the very fact of classification did not become the main obstacle in the development of cybernetics. More weighty reasons that hindered the organization of the production of Soviet computer technology were departmental disagreements between the USSR MM&P, on the one hand, and the USSR Academy of Sciences, on the other. The essence of the conflict boiled down to which particular computer - Strela or BESM - should be put into serial production. Thus, the secretary of the party bureau of the Institute of Fine Mechanics and Computer Engineering of the USSR Academy of Sciences E.I. Mamonov, in his note to the Central Committee at the beginning of 1955, wrote about one of these conflict situations: supporters of technological progress, which caused surprise and indignation of most members of the commission. […] When, after passing the BESM, a proposal arose to submit it to the Stalin Prize and to award the designers no less than the designers of the Strela, they expressed doubts about the appropriateness of such an award” 9 . MMIP did not supply the USSR Academy of Sciences with cathode-ray tubes, which were so necessary for the design of the machine. Therefore, during the initial commissioning, the BESM had a much lower speed - only up to 800 operations per second, instead of the 10,000 operations declared in the project 10 .
These disagreements reached their peak in 1953-1954. They proceeded against the background of the unfolding political struggle between the Council of Ministers of the USSR, headed by G.M. Malenkov and the Central Committee of the CPSU with the first secretary N.S. Khrushchev. Representatives of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR sent numerous notes and certificates to the Central Committee, in which they asked to declassify the existence of electronic computers in the USSR, and also to publish in the press the general principles for the construction and operation of such machines, including circuits, blocks and programs for calculating elementary functions. Scientists believed that “all these questions do not contain any elements of secrecy, because the general principles of construction and the general characteristics of existing electronic machines have long been known and are widely published in foreign scientific and technical literature, and it is these principles that are used in the design of the machine of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR” 11 . In a note to the Central Committee of Professor D.Yu. Panov dated December 11, 1954, it was reported: “At present, electronic calculating machines have become so widespread and so widely used that their presence in a technically developed country is assumed by itself. To say that in a country like the USSR there are no electronic calculating machines means approximately the same thing as to say that we do not have railways, electricity, or we cannot fly through the air […] As an argument Against the declassification of the fact of the existence of electronic calculating machines in the USSR, the argument is put forward that with the help of these machines, calculations related to secret work can be performed. Of course, such calculations are carried out everywhere on electronic calculating machines, including in the United States, and in England, and in other countries. These countries widely publish data about their machines, even advertise them, wanting to once again show their technical strength, and do not publish information about the calculations that are performed on these machines. It is absolutely impossible to form an idea of what calculations are performed by a given machine according to its description.
The secret status of BESM created international difficulties for the USSR. In 1954, an active diplomatic dialogue began between the USSR and India. In 1955, the Soviet Union was to visit J. Nehru, and India - N.S. Khrushchev. On the eve of these major international meetings, it was planned to exchange delegations of various levels. Thus, in July 1954, prominent Indian scientists, professors Mitra and Mahanobis, arrived in the USSR. They were introduced to leading scientific developments, including BESM. Representatives of the Soviet leadership promised to help the Indian side in designing and building a similar computer for the Institute of Statistics and Planning in Calcutta 21 . Later, a special agreement was signed on the supply of the necessary equipment to India for 2.1 million rubles. Soviet specialists, together with Professor Mahanobis, compiled lists of equipment to be sent. However, there was no official appeal from the Indian government to the USSR about the construction of a computer. The Indian leadership turned to the United Nations Organization for Technical Assistance to Developing Countries in order to legally smuggle Soviet equipment. The UN sent two experts to India to clarify the conditions for using the equipment - the Soviet professor V.A. Ditkin and a representative from England. The Indians objected to the arrival of the Englishman. However, the Soviet embassy in its cipher telegram reported that the Englishman nevertheless arrived in Calcutta, however, after the departure of V.A. Ditkin. Then the situation was saved by Professor Mahanobis, who met the Englishman and declared that he did not see the need for his work as an expert, but was glad for him as a guest. So the fact of the existence of the Soviet computer was kept secret.
But the scientists of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR took advantage of the situation. At the end of July 1954 S.A. Lebedev, M.A. Lavrentiev, V.A. Trapeznikov and D.Yu. Panov turned to the Vice-President of the Academy of Sciences K.V. Ostrovityanov with a request to declassify the BESM, the general standard circuit and blocks of the machine, as well as the programs for calculating elementary functions. In their note, the scientists noted that “all these questions do not contain any elements of secrecy, because the general principles of construction and the general characteristics of existing electronic machines have long been known and are widely published in foreign scientific and technical literature, and it is these principles that are used in the design of the machine of the USSR Academy of Sciences” 23 . There were also traditional arguments that the facts known to Indian scientists could be published in the English or American press. “Such a publication may complicate our relations with scientists from the People's Democracies and China, to whom we have never reported anything about the car, despite direct questions. Meanwhile, it is known that electronic computers are being developed in Czechoslovakia and Poland. As it turned out at the congress of mathematicians in Amsterdam, the Dutch demonstrated their electronic machine to the Polish mathematician Professor Kuratowski, which may entail the provision of "technical assistance" to the people's democracies from, for example, the Philips company, which is closely associated with the Americans.
However, the leadership of MMiP was categorically against the declassification of information about BESM, as this would allow the computer to be put into mass production. For example, the Ministry insisted on the retraction of an article by Academician S.A. Lebedev, which showed the benefits of using electronic computers in the economy, but without describing a specific model 13 . Only after the final commissioning of the Strela did the MM&P management change its tone in the most unexpected way and in October 1954 took the initiative to make public the data on its high-speed digital calculating machine 14 . The article "Soviet Mathematical Machines" was prepared for publication in the Pravda newspaper. However, the chief reviewer of the article, academician M.V. Keldysh, opposed it, arguing that it did not say anything about BESM. In addition, as the academician noted, “it would be wrong to start with the publication of an article that is mainly of an advertising nature” 15 . Head of the Department of Science and Culture of the Central Committee A.M. Rumyantsev in a note for the Secretary of the Central Committee P.N. Pospelova reported: “We consider it necessary to state that this is not the first time Comrade Parshin has shown a biased attitude towards the coverage of the role and significance of work on the development of counting technology, given outside the Ministry of Mechanical Engineering and Instrumentation. So, for example, he spoke negatively about the possibility of publishing an article on the computer of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, submitted earlier to the Central Committee of the CPSU, and then submitted to the Central Committee of the CPSU an article advertising the machines of the Ministry of Mechanical Engineering and Instrumentation” 16 .
This interdepartmental conflict led to the need to declassify the existence of a computer. By decision of the Council of Ministers, a declassification commission was formed under the chairmanship of Academician M.V. Keldysh, which was supposed to complete its work by January 1, 1955. A few days later, a declassification commission was also formed under the Secretariat of the Central Committee, consisting of V.A. Malysheva (chairman), A.N. Nesmeyanov and N.I. Parshin, who was instructed to make a decision within two weeks 17 . Such haste in declassification was dictated personally by N.S. Khrushchev. So, on one of the files of the Central Committee apparatus about the activities of the commission there is a characteristic note made by the assistant to the first secretary V.N. Malin: "Tov. Khrushchev got acquainted. comrade Malyshev was ordered to expedite the work of the commission.”
As a result, already on December 13, 1954, the Mechanical Engineering Department of the Central Committee decided to declassify works related to the principles of the mathematical and engineering structure of automatic high-speed digital computers. Now it was possible to openly publish data on mathematical machines (such as electronic circuits, machine performance parameters) in print. The department also decided to prepare for printing textbooks and teaching aids in the specialty "mathematical and computing devices" 18 . This was the final recognition of the merits of electronics and a kind of victory for the Academy of Sciences, which was supported by the Apparatus of the Central Committee, over the MMIP. The latter only in the summer of 1955 after the approval of the note by A.N. Nesmeyanov, A.V. Topchieva and M.A. Lavrentiev approved a decree on the development and manufacture in the second quarter of 1956 of an automatic high-speed machine with a counting rate of up to 20 thousand operations per second, as well as the creation of a small-sized machine based on semiconductor and ferrimagnetic elements 19 . In January 1956, the Ministry of Instrument Engineering and Automation was formed, one of the key tasks of which was the development and design of calculating and mathematical machines.
Pretty soon, cybernetics became one of the mechanisms of the Soviet ideological machine. Thus, at the XXII Congress of the CPSU, the provision on cybernetics was included in the party program: “Cybernetics, electronic computing devices are widely used in the productive processes of industry, the construction industry and transport, in scientific research, in planning and design calculations, in the field of accounting and management” 20 . The development of cybernetics, according to Soviet propagandists, was to become one of the necessary conditions for achieving communism.
Thus, the analysis of the documents of the highest authorities of the USSR at the turn of the 1940s - 1950s quite convincingly demonstrates the whole inconsistency of the myths about the persecution of cybernetics. The Soviet government was extremely interested in the development of this area of science, however, the conservatism of some scientists, the excessive secrecy regime and interdepartmental squabbles became factors that objectively interfered with the development of cybernetics during this period.
Appendix. Review of computers, carried out by the Institute of Scientific Information of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. March 2, 1955
1 RGANI. F. 5. Op. 47. D. 53. L. 118–119.
2 Ibid. L. 119.
3 Decrees of the Council of Ministers of the USSR for April 1949. First part. Decree of April 6, 1949 No. 1358. S. 196 - 202.
4 Ibid. S. 201.
5 See: Kitov V.A., Shilov V.V. On the history of the struggle for cybernetics // Institute of the History of Natural Science and Technology. S.I. Vavilov. Annual scientific conference dedicated to the 120th anniversary of the birth of S.I. Vavilov. 2011. M., 2011.S. 540.
6 Obodan E. Computer technology - in the service of technical progress // Izvestia of the Soviets of Workers' Deputies of the USSR. 1951. No. 201.
7 RGASPI. F. 17. Op. 133. D. 174. L. 129 - 133.
8 Ibid. L. 147.
9 RGANI. F. 5. Op. 35. D. 6. L. 114.
10 RGANI. F. 5. Op. 17. D. 512. L. 36.
11 RGANI. F.4. Op. 9. D. 520. L. 218.
12 RGANI. F. 5. Op. 17. D. 509. L. 34 - 35.
13 RGANI. F. 5. Op. 17. D. 458. L. 100 - 106.
14 RGANI. F. 5. Op. 40. D. 3. L. 90.
15 Ibid L.99.
16 Ibid. 104. In the decision of the Central Committee of the CPSU on the publication of the article by MMiP P.N. Pospelov wrote in pencil: “I doubt the usefulness of this publication. 10.01. 55" [ibid. L. 105].
17 RGANI. F. 4. Op. 9. D. 138. L. 100.
18 Ibid L. 97.
19 Ibid. L. 40.
20 Program of the CPSU. 1961, p. 71.
21 RGANI. F. 4. Op. 9. D. 520. L. 217.
23 RGANI. F. 5. Op. 17. D. D. 509. L. 31.
24 RGANI. F. 4. Op. 9. D. 520. L. 218.
25 Ibid. L. 219.
