The task of building a national automated management system (OGAS) for the economy was set to me by the First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers (then A.N. Kosygin) in November 1962. The President of the USSR Academy of Sciences, M.V., brought me to him. Keldysh, with whom I shared some of my thoughts on this matter.
When I briefly outlined to Kosygin what we wanted to do, he approved of our intentions, and the USSR Council of Ministers issued an order to create a special commission under my chairmanship to prepare materials for a government resolution. This commission included academic economists, in particular, Academician N.N. Fedorenko, head of the Central Bureau of Investigation V.N. Starovsky, First Deputy Minister of Communications A.I. Sergiychuk, as well as other employees of government bodies.
The Commission and its Chairman, i.e. I was given certain powers. They consisted in the fact that I had the opportunity to come to any office - to the minister, the chairman of the State Planning Committee - and ask questions or just sit in a corner and watch how he works: what he decides, how he decides, by what procedures, etc. Naturally, I received permission to familiarize myself with any industrial facilities of my choice - enterprises, organizations, etc.
By this time, our country already had the concept of a unified system of computer centers for processing economic information. It was put forward by academician and prominent economist V.S. Nemchinov and his students. They suggested using the computer equipment available in the data centers, but not in remote access mode. Economists and computer scientists didn’t know this then. In fact, they copied proposals prepared in 1955 by the USSR Academy of Sciences on the creation of a system of academic computing centers for scientific calculations, in accordance with which the Computing Center of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences was created. They proposed to do exactly the same for the economy: to build large computer centers (state-owned) in Moscow, Kyiv, Novosibirsk, Riga, Kharkov and other cities, which would be serviced at the proper level and where employees of various economic institutions would bring their tasks, count, receive the results went away. That's what their concept was. Of course, she could not satisfy me, since by this time we were already controlling objects at a distance, transmitting data from the depths of the Atlantic directly to the computer center in Kyiv.
In our country, all organizations were poorly prepared to perceive the processing of economic information. The blame lay both with economists, who calculated practically nothing, and with the creators of computers. As a result, a situation was created that our statistical and partly planning bodies were equipped with calculating and analytical machines of the 1939 model, which by that time had been completely replaced in America by computers.
Until 1965, the Americans developed two lines: scientific machines (these are high-bit binary floating-point machines) and economic machines (sequential binary-decimal machines with advanced memory, etc.). For the first time these two lines were connected in IBM machines.
We had nothing to merge, since there were only machines for scientific calculations, and no one was working on machines for economics. The first thing I did then was try to interest the designers, in particular B.I. Rameev (designer of the Ural-1 and Ural-2 computers) and V.V. Przhiyalkovsky (designer of the Minsk series computers), the need to develop new machines focused on economic applications.
I organized a team at our institute, and I myself developed a program to familiarize them with the task set by Kosygin. I spent a week at the USSR Central Statistical Office, where I studied its work in detail. I looked through the entire chain from the regional station to the Central Statistical Office of the USSR. I spent a lot of time at the State Planning Committee, where its old employees provided me with great help. This is, first of all, Vasily Mikhailovich Ryabikov, first deputy chairman of the State Planning Committee, responsible for defense issues, I. Spirin, head of the consolidated sector of defense industries in the USSR State Planning Committee. Both had very extensive experience in managing the war economy, and, of course, they knew the work of the State Planning Committee well. With their help, I understood all the tasks and stages of planning and the difficulties that arise.
During 1963, I visited no less than 100 sites, enterprises and organizations of various profiles: from factories and mines to state farms. Then I continued this work, and within ten years the number of objects reached almost a thousand. Therefore, I very well, perhaps more than anyone else, imagine the national economy as a whole: from the bottom to the very top, the features of the existing management system, the difficulties that arise and what needs to be considered. I had an understanding of what was needed from technology quite quickly. Long before the end of the introductory work, I put forward the concept of not just individual government centers, but a network of computer centers with remote access, i.e. put modern technical content into the concept of collective use.
We (V.M. Glushkov, V.S. Mikhalevich, A.I. Nikitin and others - Note auto ) developed the first draft design of the Unified State Network of Computer Centers of the Unified State Computer Center, which included about 100 centers in large industrial cities and centers of economic regions, united by broadband communication channels. These centers, distributed throughout the country, in accordance with the configuration of the system, are combined with others involved in processing economic information. We then estimated their number at 20 thousand. These are large enterprises, ministries, as well as cluster centers that served small enterprises. Characteristic was the presence of a distributed data bank and the possibility of addressless access from any point in this system to any information after automatic verification of the authority of the requesting person. A number of issues related to information security have been developed. In addition, in this two-tier system, the main computer centers exchange information with each other not by switching channels and switching messages, as is customary now, broken down into letters, I proposed connecting these 100 or 200 centers with broadband channels, bypassing the channel-forming equipment so that it is possible it was possible to rewrite information from magnetic tape in Vladivostok to tape in Moscow without reducing speed. Then all protocols are greatly simplified and the network acquires new properties. This has not yet been implemented anywhere in the world. Our project was secret until 1977.
In addition to the network structure, I immediately found it necessary to develop a system of mathematical models for economic management in order to see regular flows of information. I told Academician V.S. about this. Nemchinov, who at that time was seriously ill and was lying at home, however received me, listened to me and, in principle, approved everything.
Then I presented our concept to M.V. Keldysh, who approved everything, with the exception of the cashless payment system for the population, but the system also works without it. In his opinion, it would cause unnecessary emotions, and in general this should not be confused with planning. I agreed with him, and we did not include this part in the project. In this regard, I wrote a separate note to the CPSU Central Committee, which surfaced many times, then disappeared again, but no decision was made regarding the creation of a cashless payment system.
Having completed the drafting, we submitted it to the members of the commission for consideration.
Achieving a solution to a task of enormous complexity and material costs, V.M. Glushkov wrote an article for Pravda in 1962.
After reading it, Glushkov’s former supervisor on his doctoral dissertation A.G. Kurosh, who closely followed the progress of the talented student, wrote to him:
"...Dreaming, I can imagine you at the head of an all-Union body planning and organizing the restructuring of economic management, i.e. national economy on the basis of cybernetics (in accordance, of course, with the basic guidelines of the country’s highest authorities), as well as the introduction of cybernetics into industry, science, and, I want to emphasize, into teaching (at all levels), medicine and, in general, into all types of intellectual activity. It would be sad if this body turned out to be a ministerial or state committee, i.e. bureaucratic body. It should be a body of high intelligence, composed of people capable, each in their own field, of the same understanding of large problems that you apparently have on the problem as a whole. It should be an organ with almost no apparatus, an organ of thinkers, not bureaucrats. These are just dreams, of course, except for the question of the head of this body - you could do a lot to realize these dreams..."
Unfortunately, after the commission reviewed the project, almost nothing remained of it, the entire economic part was removed, and only the network itself remained. The seized materials were destroyed and burned, as they were secret. We weren't even allowed to have a copy at the institute. Therefore, unfortunately, we will not be able to restore them.
V.N. began to sharply object to the entire project as a whole. Starovsky, head of the Central Bureau of Investigation. His objections were demagogic. We insisted on such a new accounting system so that any information could be immediately obtained from any point. And he referred to the fact that the Central Statistical Office was organized on Lenin’s initiative, and it copes with the tasks set by him; managed to obtain assurances from Kosygin that the information that the CSB gives to the government is sufficient for management, and therefore nothing needs to be done.
In the end, when it came to approving the project, everyone signed it, but the CSB objected. So it was written that the CSB objects to the entire project as a whole.
In June 1964, we submitted our project to the government for consideration. In November 1964, a meeting of the Presidium of the Council of Ministers took place, at which I reported on this project. Naturally, I did not remain silent about the CSB’s objection. The decision was this: to entrust the finalization of the project to the CSO, involving the Ministry of Radio Industry.
Within two years, the CSO did the following work. We came from below, not from above: not from the idea of what the country needs, but from what we have. The district branches of the CSB of the Arkhangelsk Region and the Karakalpak Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic were instructed to study the flow of information - how many documents, numbers and letters are received by the district branch of the CSB from enterprises, organizations, etc.
According to CSB statistics, when processing information on computers, for each entered number or letter there are 50 sorting or arithmetic operations. The drafters wrote with an important air that when electronic machines are used, there will be ten times more operations. Why this is so, only the Lord God knows. Then they took the number of all pieces of paper, multiplied by 500 and got the productivity required from a computer, which should, for example, be installed in Arkhangelsk and Nukus (in the Karakalpak Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic). And they came up with ridiculous numbers: the speed of computer calculations should be about 2 thousand operations per second or so. That's all. This is how the project was submitted to the government.
An acceptance committee was created again; they wanted to make me chairman, but I refused for ethical reasons. They agreed with this. After the commission members familiarized themselves with the project, representatives of the State Planning Committee were indignant, saying that they did not share all of Academician Glushkov’s concepts, but his project at least included planning, and this was just statistics. The commission almost unanimously rejected this project, with the exception of me. I proposed, given the vital importance of this matter for the country, to recognize the project as unsatisfactory, but to move on to the development of a technical project, entrusting this to the Ministry of Radio Industry, the USSR Academy of Sciences, and the State Planning Committee. They did not agree with this, my proposal was recorded as a dissenting opinion and the State Planning Committee was instructed to re-do the preliminary design.
The State Planning Committee required two years for this, and it was already 1966. Until 1968, they procrastinated and procrastinated, but did absolutely nothing. And instead of a preliminary design, they prepared a decree from the Council of Ministers of the USSR stating that, since they had very wisely liquidated the economic councils and restored the sectoral method of management, there was now nothing to worry about. It is necessary that all ministries create sectoral systems, and from them a national system will automatically emerge. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief - there was no need to do anything, and such an order was given. The result was OGAS - a hodgepodge.
V.M. Glushkova recalls that more than once, returning from Moscow, her husband said: it’s terribly depressing to think that no one needs anything. During these years, under the glass on Glushkov’s desk in his home office, along with the previously slipped note, another one lay:
But it was not so much a matter of “stupid people” as a matter of deliberate discrediting of the scientist’s ideas.
Starting from 1964 (the time my project appeared), economists Lieberman, Belkin, Birman and others began to openly oppose me, many of whom later left for the USA and Israel. Kosygin, being a very practical person, became interested in the possible cost of our project. According to preliminary estimates, its implementation would cost 20 billion rubles. The bulk of the work can be done in three five-year plans, but only on the condition that this program is organized in the same way as the atomic and space ones. I did not hide from Kosygin that it is more complex than the space and atomic programs combined and much more difficult organizationally, since it affects everything and everyone: industry, trade, planning bodies, the sphere of government, etc. Although the cost of the project was approximately estimated at 20 billion rubles, the working scheme for its implementation provided that the first 5 billion rubles invested in the first five-year plan at the end of the five-year period would give a return of more than 5 billion, since we provided for the self-sufficiency of the costs of the program. And in just three five-year plans, the implementation of the program would bring at least 100 billion rubles to the budget. And this is still a very underestimated figure.
But our would-be economists confused Kosygin by saying that economic reform would not cost anything at all, i.e. will cost exactly as much as the cost of the paper on which the resolution of the Council of Ministers will be printed, and will yield more as a result. Therefore, they put us aside and, moreover, began to treat us with caution. And Kosygin was dissatisfied. Shelest called me and told me to temporarily stop promoting OGAS and work on lower-level systems.
That’s when we started working on the “Lviv system”. Dmitry Fedorovich Ustinov invited the heads of the defense ministries to his place and gave them the command to do everything that Glushkov says. Moreover, from the very beginning it was envisaged that systems would be made for all industries at once, i.e. there was some kind of beginning of a national state.
Ustinov gave the command that none of the economists should be allowed into the enterprises. We could work peacefully. And this saved us time and gave us the opportunity to prepare personnel. To carry out the work, a number of new organizations were created - the Shikhaev Institute, the Danilchenko Institute, etc. - in all branches of the institute. We arranged people and began to work slowly. And the Institute of Cybernetics of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine switched mainly first to the “Lvov” and then to the “Kuntsevo” systems - they dealt with the “bottom”, so to speak.
To manage the work in the defense complex, an interdepartmental committee (IMC) of nine industries was created under the leadership of the Minister of Radio Industry P.S. Pleshakov and the board of directors of the leading institutes (SDGI) of the defense industries in management, economics and computer science under the leadership of Yuri Evgenievich Antipov, a member of the military-industrial commission of the military-industrial complex. The scientific director of the committee and council was V.M. Glushkov. Remembering this time, Yu.E. Antipov writes:
"Starting from 1966, the work was carried out in this way: first, the problem associated with the creation of one or another automated system was discussed at the SDGI, then considered at the IMC, and at a meeting of the military-industrial complex the final decision was made.
According to this scheme, the main ideas expressed by Glushkov were implemented: the development of standard systems for enterprises and industry, the creation of software methods for planning and management, the transition to system design of means of transmitting and processing information, the development of information industry infrastructures, problems of modeling and management, etc. I think that V.M. Glushkov was lucky that the defense industry found the strength to implement his ideas".
They were also found in Ukraine. On the initiative of Viktor Mikhailovich, by decision of the Government of Ukraine, a special department with fairly broad powers was created in the State Planning Committee of the Ukrainian SSR in 1971, the head of which was invited with the approval of Academician M.T. Glushkov. Matveev. Currently he is the director of the Main Research Institute for Informatics Problems of the Ministry of Economy of Ukraine, Doctor of Economics. In practice, this was Glushkov’s support department, which, functioning in the State Planning Committee of the Ukrainian SSR, became the conductor of his scientific policy. With such a powerful foundation, the department was able to quickly establish the process of systematic introduction of computer technologies into the national economy and begin the design and practical implementation of RASU and RSVC projects in Ukraine. For many years before the death of Viktor Mikhailovich, Ukraine occupied a leading position in the USSR on all issues.
"The role and merits of Viktor Mikhailovich in this can hardly be overestimated, - recalls M.T. about that memorable time. Matveev. - The high efficiency of the work of everyone involved in the computerization process was due to the fact that Viktor Mikhailovich resolved any issues in real time, without delays; The academician’s understanding of the issues and ability to find ways to implement seemingly insoluble issues in real conditions was amazing: waiting for many weeks and many months for an audience with Viktor Mikhailovich was not a practice. He actively and effectively defended the interests of the field of computerization at the highest state level. Viktor Mikhailovich was the only one in this regard, not only in Ukraine, but also in the USSR. This is confirmed by the resulting and increasing stagnation in this most important area after his departure. I cannot name a single significant government act adopted since then that would breathe new life into the work he began. We, his students and like-minded people, although we tried to further advance his ideas and plans in memory of him, often, very often felt his irreparable loss. I am deeply convinced that he would have found a way out of the current completely illogical and inexplicable crisis and dangerous situation".
Indeed, in numerous scientific and journalistic articles and monographs by V.M. Glushkov expressed and developed many ideas for improving the public administration system, in particular, creating more advanced methods of regulating production and social processes than existing ones, revising various kinds of standards and developing mechanisms for their objective formation, creating a technical basis for coordinating production programs throughout the country , providing managers with tools for forming, modeling and assessing the consequences of decisions made (Displan system. A.A. Bakaev), using more equitable distribution mechanisms, creating an accounting system that would identify sources of unearned income, introducing a system of non-cash payments for everything population, etc. Many of these ideas, which seemed too revolutionary in his time, today have acquired a new relevance.
At the end of the 60s, information appeared in the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR that back in 1966 the Americans made a preliminary design of an information network (more precisely, several networks), i.e. two years later than us. Unlike us, they did not argue, but did it, and they planned to launch the network in 1969 ARPANET and then SEYBARPANET and others, combining computers that were installed in various cities in the USA.
Then we got worried too. I went to Kirilenko and gave him a note that I needed to return to the ideas that were in my project. “Write what needs to be done, we’ll create a commission", he said. I wrote something like this: " The only thing I ask you to do is not to create a commission based on my note, because practice shows that the commission works on the principle of subtracting minds, not adding, and can ruin any business"But nevertheless, the commission was created. V.A. Kirillin (chairman of the State Committee on Science and Technology) was appointed chairman, and I was appointed deputy.
The commission was of an even higher level - with the participation of the Minister of Finance, the Minister of Instrument Making, etc. It was supposed to prepare a draft decision on the creation of OGAS. And we had to submit these materials for consideration by the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee, and the Politburo had already decided that it would go to the congress.
The action has begun. And here I focused not so much on the essence of the matter, since it was contained in the project, but on the mechanism for implementing OGAS.
The fact is that Korolev or Kurchatov had a boss from the Politburo, and they could come to him and immediately resolve any issue. Our problem was that in our work there was no such person. But the questions here were more complex, because they involved politics, and any mistake could have tragic consequences. Therefore, communication with one of the members of the Politburo was all the more important, because this is not only a scientific and technical task, but primarily a political one.
We envisaged the creation of the State Committee for the Improvement of Management (Goskompra), a scientific center under it consisting of 10-15 institutes, and almost all of the institutes already existed at that time - only one, the head one, had to be created anew. The rest could be taken from industries or the Academy of Sciences or partially reassigned. And there must be someone responsible for this whole matter from the Politburo.
Everything went smoothly, everyone agreed. At this time, the draft directives of the 26th Congress were published, which included all our formulations prepared at the commission.
Our issue was considered twice at the Poliburo. At one meeting the essence of the matter was discussed, they agreed with it and said that OGAS should be done. But how to do it - whether it was the State Committee for Internal Affairs or something else - this caused controversy.
I managed to “put pressure” on all the members of the commission; only Garbuzov did not sign our proposals. But we still submitted them to the Politburo.
And when we came to the meeting (and it, by the way, took place in Stalin’s former office), Kirillin whispered to me: something happened, but he didn’t know what. The issue was considered at the meeting, without the General Secretary (Brezhnev went to Baku to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Soviet power in Azerbaijan), Kosygin (he was in Egypt at the funeral of A. Nasser). The meeting was chaired by Suslov. First they gave the floor to Kirillin, then to me. I spoke briefly, but a lot of questions were asked. I answered everything. Then Kosygin’s deputies were invited, and Baibakov spoke. He said this:
"Smirnov supported, and, in general, all deputy chairmen supported our proposals. I heard that Comrade Garbuzov has objections here.(Minister of Finance - Note auto ) . If they concern increasing the apparatus, then I consider the matter so important that if the Politburo sees only a difficulty in this, then let me be given instructions, as the chairman of the State Planning Committee, and I will make a proposal to liquidate three ministries (reduce or merge) and then there will be staff for this matter".
K.B. Rudnev (Minister of PSA and SU. - Note auto ) broke away. Although he signed our document, he spoke here and said that this might be premature - something like that.
Garbuzov spoke in such a way that what he said was suitable for an anecdote. He went to the podium and addressed Mazurov (he was then Kosygin’s first deputy). So, Kirill Trofimovich, on your instructions I went to Minsk, and we inspected poultry farms. And there, on such and such a poultry farm (he named it), the poultry workers themselves developed a computer.
Then I laughed out loud. He shook his finger at me and said: " You, Glushkov, don’t laugh, they’re talking about serious things here"But Suslov interrupted him:" Comrade Garbuzov, you are not the chairman here yet, and it’s not your job to restore order at a Politburo meeting". And he, as if nothing had happened, such a self-confident and narcissistic person, continues: " Performs three programs: turns on music when the chicken has laid an egg, turns the light off and on, and so on. Egg production on the farm has increased"He says what we need to do: first automate all poultry farms in the Soviet Union, and then think about all sorts of nonsense like a national system. (And I actually laughed here, not then.) Okay, that’s not the point. .
A counterproposal was made, which reduced everything by an order of magnitude: instead of the State Committee for Computer Science - the Main Directorate for Computer Science at the State Committee for Science and Technology, instead of the scientific center - VNIIPOU, etc. And the task remained the same, but it became more technical, i.e. changed towards the State Network of Computer Centers, and as for the economy, the development of mathematical models for OGAS, etc. - it was all blurred.
At the end Suslov speaks and says: " Comrades, maybe we are making a mistake now by not accepting the project in full, but this is such a revolutionary transformation that it is difficult for us to implement it now. Let's try this like this for now, and then we'll see how to proceed"And he asks not Kirillin, but me:" How do you think?". And I say: " Mikhail Andreevich, I can only tell you one thing: if we don’t do this now, then in the second half of the 70s the Soviet economy will face such difficulties that we will still have to return to this issue"But they didn’t take my opinion into account and accepted the counter-proposal.
Well, the work started. Yes, and then, when my first commission was created in 1962, at the same time the Main Directorate for Computer Science was created in the State Committee for Science and Technology. It worked for more than two years, and then, when the ministries were restored and Rudnev’s ministry was formed, the department was liquidated in 1966 and Rudnev took people from there to his Ministry of Instrumentation and Automation. And now it has been recreated.
Somewhere in November Kirilenko invites me. I arrived at his reception room on Old Square at two minutes to ten. Our missile minister S.A. was sitting there. Afanasyev, who was called to 10.10. Asks me: " Do you have a quick question?“And I answer him that I don’t know why they called me.
I'll go in first. Andrei Pavlovich gets up, congratulates and says:
"You are appointed Kirillin's first deputy(to the place now occupied by D.G. Zhimerin). I already agreed on this with Leonid Ilyich, he asked if he should talk to you, but I answered - no need, I’ll sort everything out myself".
"Andrey Pavlovich, - I answer him, - Have you talked to me about this topic beforehand? Or maybe I don't agree? You know that I objected, I believe that, in the form that it is now adopted, the decision can only distort the idea, nothing will come of it. And if I accept your proposal, then you and I will be to blame: I made a proposal, you supported me, they appointed me, they gave me, it seems, everything, but there is nothing. You are an intelligent person, you understand that from such a position it is impossible to make even a simple rocket, let alone build it, let alone build a new economic system of government".
We sat down, and he began to persuade me. Like, you are putting me in an awkward position in front of Leonid Ilyich, I told him that everything has been settled. But I don't give in. Then he switched to strong words and expressions, but I didn’t care. Then again to soft, again to strong. In general, in more than an hour he let me go. So we didn’t agree on anything. He didn’t even say goodbye to me, and until the 24th Congress, when we met, we didn’t greet or talk.
Later the relationship was restored. And then he proposed his friend Zhimerin as Kirillin’s deputy. And I agreed to be the scientific director of VNIIPOU.
Meanwhile, a bacchanalia began in the Western press. At first, virtually no one knew anything about our proposals; they were secret. The first document that appeared in print was the draft directives of the XXIV Congress, where it was written about OGAS, GSVC, etc.
The Americans were the first to worry. They, of course, are not betting on a war with us - this is just a cover, they are trying to crush our economy, which is already weak, with an arms race. And, of course, any strengthening of our economy is for them the worst thing that can happen. Therefore, they immediately opened fire on me from all possible calibers. Two articles first appeared: one in the Washington Post by Victor Zorza, and the other in the English Guardian. The first was called “The Punch Card Rules the Kremlin” and was aimed at our leaders. It said the following: " The Tsar of Soviet Cybernetics, Academician V.M. Glushkov, proposes to replace Kremlin leaders with computers". And so on, a low-grade article.
The Guardian article was aimed at the Soviet intelligentsia. It was said there that Academician Glushkov proposes to create a network of computer centers with data banks, that this sounds very modern, and this is more advanced than what is now in the West, but it is not being done for the economy, but in fact this is an order from the KGB aimed at , to hide the thoughts of Soviet citizens in data banks and monitor every person.
Then followed a whole series of reprints of these dirty libels in other leading capitalist newspapers - both American and Western European, and a series of new articles. Then strange things began to happen. In 1970, I flew from Montreal to Moscow on an Il-62 plane. The experienced pilot felt something was wrong when we were already flying over the Atlantic, and returned back. It turned out that something had been added to the fuel. Thank God, everything worked out, but it remains a mystery who did it and why. And a little later, in Yugoslavia, a truck almost hit our car - our driver miraculously managed to dodge.
And all of our opposition, in particular the economic one, turned against me. At the beginning of 1972, Izvestia published an article “Lessons from the Electronic Boom,” written by Milner, deputy to G.A. Arbatov - Director of the Institute of the United States of America. In it, he tried to prove that in the United States the demand for computing machines had fallen. In a number of memos to the CPSU Central Committee from economists who went on business trips to the United States, the use of computer technology to manage the economy was equated to the fashion for abstract painting. They say capitalists buy cars only because it is fashionable, so as not to seem outdated. This all disoriented the management.
Yes, I forgot to say what else contributed to the negative decision on our proposal. The fact is that Garbuzov told Kosygin that the Goskompr would become an organization with the help of which the CPSU Central Committee would control whether Kosygin and the Council of Ministers as a whole were managing the economy correctly. And this set Kosygin against us, and since he objected, then, naturally, the proposal for the State Committee on State Property Management could not be accepted. But this became known to me two years later.
And then a campaign was undertaken to refocus the main efforts and funds on managing technological processes. This blow was very accurately calculated, because both Kirilenko and Leonid Ilyich are technologists by training, so this was close and understandable to them.
In 1972, an All-Union Conference was held under the leadership of A.P. Kirilenko, in which the main focus was made towards technological process control in order to slow down the work on the automated control system, and give full speed to the automated process control system.
The reports that were sent to the Central Committee of the CPSU were, in my opinion, a skillfully organized disinformation campaign by the American CIA against attempts to improve our economy. They correctly calculated that such sabotage is the easiest way to win economic competition, cheap and sure. I was able to do something to counteract this. I asked our scientific adviser in Washington to compile a report on how the popularity of cars in the United States actually “fell”, which former Ambassador Dobrynin sent to the CPSU Central Committee. Such reports, especially those from the leading power, were sent to all members of the Politburo and they read them. The calculation turned out to be correct, and this softened the blow a little. So it was not possible to completely eliminate the topic of automated control systems.
"The OGAS has gone out!" - the enemies of the scientist slandered him both in the USSR and abroad. And yet, Glushkov’s efforts were not in vain. Kosygin once asked him: is it possible to see anything of what you constantly talk about? Glushkov recommended that you familiarize yourself with what has been done in the defense industry, in particular, at the institute headed by I.A. Danilchenko, who was then the chief designer of automated control systems and the introduction of computer technology into the defense industry. Glushkov was the scientific supervisor of these works and was confident that they would make a great impression on Kosygin.
Danilchenko learned that the Chairman of the Council of Ministers was going to visit the institute from the Minister of Defense Industry S.A. Zverev, who called him on the eve of the visit. At this time, Glushkov was not in Moscow. And although Danilchenko believed that the scientific director should receive the distinguished guests, he could no longer do anything. I had to limit myself to talking with Glushkov on the phone.
At ten o'clock in the morning Kosygin, Defense Minister Ustinov, and the ministers of the main industries arrived at the institute. (The following is from Danilchenko’s words).
The visit lasted throughout the day - until eleven o'clock at night.
Danilchenko told the guests about a typical automated control system for defense enterprises, about the newly created data transmission network, and about the use of computer technology at defense enterprises. Everything went “smoothly”; it was felt that the visitors were pleased with what they saw and heard.
When the visit was drawing to a close (it was nine o’clock in the evening) and it seemed that it would end happily, Kosygin suddenly said:
- According to available information, a report on the production and use of computer technology in the USSR has been prepared in one of the leading Western countries. It says that we have fewer cars and they are worse and at the same time underutilized. Why is this happening? And is this right?
Danilchenko understood how much depended on what he said, and, trying to collect his thoughts, he remembered Glushkov’s advice: in any situation, speak only the truth!
- Yes! All this is true!- he answered.
- Reasons?- Kosygin asked sharply.
- The basic principle of a leader, put forward by Academician Glushkov, is not observed - the principle of the first person! The country's leaders do not psychologically perceive computers, and this has the most negative impact on the development and use of computer technology in the country!
Kosygin listened attentively, the others were silent, looking first at the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, then at the defendant.
Danilchenko—his rank was a general—continued, as if making a report:
- The main task is to overcome the psychological barrier in the highest sphere of leadership. Otherwise, neither Glushkov, nor I, nor anyone else will do anything. It is necessary to train the upper echelons of power in computer technology, show its capabilities, and turn managers towards new technology. Academician Glushkov wrote about this to the CPSU Central Committee and the USSR Council of Ministers, but to no avail. He asked me to talk about it!
A.N. Kosygin calmly listened to the deeply agitated Danilchenko and, without summing up any conclusions, said goodbye and left, taking with him the Minister of Defense Industry Zverev.
The rest decided to wait for any news about Kosygin's reaction. At half past twelve at night Zverev called and asked for Ustinov to come on the phone.
- Kosygin is very pleased with the meeting, he said, Now there will be big changes!
And they really started. At first, a special school was organized, which three months later was transformed into the Institute of National Economy Management. The first group of listeners included union ministers, the second included ministers of the union republics, after them their deputies and other responsible persons. Kosygin opened the lectures for the first class. He was also present at the graduation of school students, who, by the way, had to take real exams.
Lectures were given by Glushkov and other leading scientists of the country. - And things went well! Glushkov’s “first person” principle worked! The ministers, having figured out what was going on, began to take the initiative themselves. Much has been done. But when Kosygin died, the “first-person principle” worked again, this time in the opposite direction.
During the preparations for the 25th Congress of the CPSU, an attempt was made to completely remove the word “OGAS” from the draft decision. I wrote a note to the CPSU Central Committee when the draft “Main Directions” had already been published, and proposed the creation of sectoral management systems with their subsequent unification into OGAS. And it was accepted.
The same thing happened during the preparation of the 26th Congress. But we were better prepared: we handed over the materials to the commission that compiled Brezhnev’s speech (report). I interested almost all the members of the commission, the most important of those who prepared the speech, Tsukanov, went to the institute to see Danilchenko, after which he promised to push through our proposals. At first they wanted to include them in Brezhnev’s speech at the October (1980) plenum of the CPSU Central Committee, then they tried to include them in the reporting report, but it turned out to be too long and they had to throw out a lot. Nevertheless, the report said more about computer technology than was initially wanted.
I was advised to launch a campaign for the creation of OGAS in Pravda. The editor of this newspaper, a former manager, supported me. And the fact that my article was given the title “The Case of the Entire Country” (The article in Pravda was called “For the whole country.” - Note auto .) , was hardly an accident. Pravda is an organ of the CPSU Central Committee, which means that the article was discussed and approved there.
After an article in the Pravda newspaper, the scientist began to hope that OGAS would finally become a matter for the whole country. Wasn’t this what made the seriously ill man hold on and dictate the last lines?
On this day, the assistant to the USSR Minister of Defense Ustinov came to his intensive care unit and asked if the minister could help with anything? The scientist, who had just finished the story about his “walk through torment,” could not help but remember the wall of bureaucracy and misunderstanding that he was unable to ram through while trying to “break through” OGAS. " Let him send a tank!“- he answered angrily, surrounded by tubes and wires from devices that supported his barely glimmering life. His brain was clear even in these difficult moments, but the patience to endure mental and physical torment was already coming to an end...
History has confirmed that the words of V.M. Glushkov that the Soviet economy would face enormous difficulties in the late 70s turned out to be prophetic.
Until the end of his life, he remained faithful to his idea of creating OGAS, the implementation of which could save the failing economy. Maybe he was a hopeless dreamer? Romantic scientist? History will have its final say. Let us only note that the “deniers” of his ideas in the West followed his path and now do not hesitate to refer to the fact that they are implementing his plans. It turns out that the scientist was right when he spoke about the reasons for the criticism that fell upon him in the foreign media!
His story about the struggle for the creation of OGAS is an indictment of state leaders who failed to fully use the scientist’s powerful talent. If only Glushkova! There is no doubt that this is one of the important reasons why a great country stumbled on the threshold of the 21st century, depriving millions of people for a long time of confidence in the future, in a worthy future for their children, and the belief that they lived, are living and will live not in vain. LOR="#000099">
The presence of a planned economy in the former USSR made it possible to create the most effective system of economic management. Understanding this, V.M. Glushkov bet on OGAS. According to experts, the management system that existed in the USSR was three times cheaper than the American one, when the United States had the same gross national product. The rejection of OGAS was a strategic mistake of our leadership, our society, since the creation of OGAS provided a unique opportunity to unite the information and telecommunications structure in the country into a single system that made it possible to solve issues of economics, education, health, and ecology at a new scientific and technical level, making it accessible to everyone integrated data and knowledge banks on the main problems of science and technology, integrated into the international information system.
Implementation of OGAS during the life of V.M. Glushkova could bring the country to a new level of development corresponding to a post-industrial society.
They interfered with the creation of OGAS " incompetence of senior management, reluctance of the middle bureaucratic level to work under strict control and on the basis of objective information collected and processed using computers, unpreparedness of society as a whole, imperfection of the technical means existing at that time, misunderstanding, and even opposition of learned economists to new management methods". (From a letter received by the author from Yu.E. Antipov.)
You can agree and disagree with one of the prominent representatives of the command-administrative system, a supporter of Glushkov in the fight for OGAS, but one thing is clear: Glushkov was certainly right when he set the task of informatization and computerization of the country. But under those conditions, he could not do anything without a large-scale decision by the government and the CPSU Central Committee, which became a barrier in his way. It is also clear that the scientist was ahead of his time: the state and society were not ready to accept OGAS. This turned into a tragedy for the scientist, who did not want to come to terms with the lack of understanding of what was absolutely obvious to him.
On the morning of January 30, in front of those in the ward, I.A. Danilchenko and Yu.A. Mikheev blue splashes on the monitor screen that recorded the work of the heart suddenly disappeared, they were replaced by a straight line - the scientist’s heart stopped beating...
For the final personality assessment of V.M. Glushkov is best suited by the words of the President of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine B.E. Patona:
"V.M. Glushkov is a brilliant, truly outstanding scientist of our time, who has made a huge contribution to the development of cybernetics and computer technology in Ukraine and the former Soviet Union, and in the world as a whole.
with his works he anticipated much of what has now appeared in the informatized Western society.
Viktor Mikhailovich had enormous, versatile knowledge, and his erudition simply amazed everyone who came into contact with him. The eternal search for something new, the desire for progress in science, technology, and society were his remarkable features.
V.M. Glushkov was a true ascetic in science, possessing a gigantic capacity for work and hard work. He generously shared his knowledge, ideas, and experience with the people around him.
V.M. Glushkov made a great contribution to the development of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, being its vice-president since 1962. He significantly influenced the development of scientific areas related to the natural and technical sciences. His contribution to computerization and informatization of science, technology, and society is great.
Viktor Mikhailovich can safely be classified as a statesman who devoted himself entirely to serving the Fatherland and his people. He was known and respected by people in all corners of the Soviet Union. He spared no effort to promote the achievements of science, scientific and technological progress, and communicated with scientists from many foreign countries. His works and the achievements of the Institute of Cybernetics of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, which he headed, were well known abroad, where he enjoyed well-deserved authority.
Well understanding the importance of strengthening the defense capability of his country, V.M. Glushkov, together with the institute he led, completed a large range of works of defense significance. And here he always contributed something new, overcoming numerous difficulties, and sometimes simple misunderstanding. He truly supported the country and gave his wonderful life to it and science.
Prerequisites
Economic growth inevitably leads to more complex management. The outstanding Soviet scientist P. Kapitsa compared the Soviet economy with an ichthyosaur - an animal with a huge body, a long neck and a very small head. Due to the extensive development of Soviet production, the number of enterprises was constantly growing. At the same time, the management structure remained practically unchanged, as opposed to the quantitative content, which grew.
Obviously, the idea of a planned economy, while having a large number of “pros,” also had many “cons.” One of the negative consequences of the idea of building a planned economy was that any change in the annual plan led to an avalanche-like wave of re-coordination and adjustments to the plans of related companies. The requirement to urgently increase the production of, say, aircraft, put on the agenda the question of making changes to plans for the production of aluminum, steel, plywood, etc., etc. Moreover, an increase in aircraft production meant an increased load on the energy sector - changes electricity generation plans; it was necessary to transfer more cargo - adjustments were made to the movement of railway rolling stock and coal mining for steam locomotives. This, in turn, generated a wave of changes in the plans of the coal industry, which made new demands on fasteners (Narkomlesprom) and equipment (Narkomtyazhprom). These waves of plan adjustments could sweep through the economic planning system several times. If we take into account that there could be (and, as a rule, there was) more than one such “wave,” then their mutual influence could turn the process of interconnection of the People’s Commissariat’s plans into a truly “endless story.” On this basis, a number of domestic researchers generally question the planned nature of the Soviet economy. Obviously, the introduction of automated computer-based economic management systems gave hope for significantly streamlining this area of planning.
In conditions of coordinating supply and demand, the need arose for feedback between the producer and the consumer. In turn, this gave rise to an avalanche of coordination between supply and demand in ministries, entire industries, and between large and small enterprises (which could be located in different parts of the USSR).
Already by the beginning of the 60s, it became obvious that planning the Soviet economy and effectively monitoring the implementation of plans from a single center was becoming more and more difficult due to the catastrophic increase in the amount of economic information that needed to be processed. In 1962, Glushkov calculated that if the level of technical equipment in the sphere of planning, management and accounting remained unchanged (and it was completely insufficient for that time), already in 1980 it would be necessary to employ the entire adult population of the Soviet Union in this area.
Academician Glushkov, a talented mathematician from the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, worked on the problems of automation of production, collection and processing of statistical information, wrote: “In our country, all organizations were poorly prepared to perceive the processing of economic information. The blame lay both with economists, who calculated practically nothing, and with the creators of computers. As a result, a situation was created that our statistical and partly planning bodies were equipped with calculating and analytical machines of the 1939 model, which by that time had been completely replaced in America by computers.”
Glushkov understood the need to create OGAS very clearly. Subsequently, already at a Politburo meeting in 1966, dedicated to the feasibility of implementing Glushkov’s project (by that time it had undergone two revisions), skepticism arose on the part of economic managers. This is how Viktor Mikhailovich himself recalls it:
“At the end Suslov speaks and says: “Comrades, maybe we are making a mistake now by not accepting the project in full, but this is such a revolutionary transformation that it is difficult for us to implement it now. Let’s try like this for now, and then we will see, “What should I do?” And he asks not Kirillina, but me: “What do you think?” And I say: “Mikhail Andreevich, I can only tell you one thing: if we don’t do this now, then in the second half of the 70s the Soviet economy will face such difficulties that we will still have to return to this issue.” But they didn’t take my opinion into account and accepted the counterproposal.”
Viktor Mikhailovich Glushkov puts forward the idea that humanity has experienced two, as he puts it, using the language of cybernetics, information barriers, thresholds, or management crises in its history. The first arose in the conditions of the decomposition of the communal-clan economy and was resolved with the emergence, on the one hand, of commodity-money relations, and on the other, a hierarchical management system, when the senior boss controls the junior ones, and they are already the executors.
Since the 30s of the twentieth century, Glushkov believes, it has become obvious that a second “information barrier” is emerging, when neither the hierarchy in management nor commodity-money relations help. The reason for such a crisis turns out to be the inability of even many people to cover all the problems of economic management. Viktor Mikhailovich says that, according to his calculations, in the 30s, in order to solve the problems of managing our then economy, it was necessary to perform about 10 14 mathematical operations per year, and at the time when the conversation was going on, that is, in the mid-70s, - It's already about 10:16. If we assume that one person without the help of technology is able to perform on average 10 6 operations, that is, 1 million operations per year, then it turns out that about 10 billion people are needed in order for the economy to remain well managed. Next I would like to quote the words of Viktor Mikhailovich himself:
“From now on, only “machineless” management efforts are not enough. Humanity was able to overcome the first information barrier, or threshold, because it invented commodity-money relations and a stepwise management structure. Electronic computer technology is a modern invention that will allow us to step over the second threshold.
A historical turn is taking place in the famous spiral of development. When a state automated management system appears, we will easily cover the entire economy with a single view. At a new historical stage, with a new technology, at a new increased level, we seem to be “floating” above that point in the dialectical spiral, below which, separated from us by millennia, there remained a period when man could easily survey his natural economy with the naked eye.
People started with primitive communism. A large turn of the spiral raises them to scientific communism.”
EGSVTS and OGAS
In 1955, at the Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee, the previously seriously discussed theory about the impossibility of obsolescence of technology under socialism was finally condemned. The decisions of the congress recorded the need for: “every possible increase in the technical level of production on the basis of electrification, comprehensive mechanization and automation.”
In 1963, the task of building a nationwide automated control system was assigned to V. M. Glushkov by Kosygin himself. Glushkov already had projects under his belt to implement automated control systems at enterprises. There is a misconception that Glushkov was a kind of economic romantic from mathematics, who had little knowledge of the realities of the Soviet industrial complex. In fact, in 1963 he visited 100 national economic facilities: factories, mines and state farms. Spent a week at the USSR Central Statistical Office and traced the chain of its work from the head center in Moscow to regional stations. Over the ten years of work on the project, Glushkov visited about a thousand enterprises
The preliminary design design of the Unified State Network of Computer Centers - the Unified State Network of Computer Centers - was developed in record time (1.5 months!). Glushkov “scrolled” the complete solution in his brain. He discussed the general contours of the network and the interconnection of fragments with those who are able to understand and implement these settings. By that time, the Institute of Cybernetics, perhaps the main brainchild of the academician, already had such specialists with experience in developing automated control systems, creating computer communication systems, who began creating multi-machine complexes, computer networks, able to solve optimization problems in predetermining production activities. When in 1980 Viktor Mikhailovich outlined system optimization schemes, it was decided to summarize previous developments in optimization methods and the team of institute specialists under the leadership of V.S. Mikhalevich, known in the country for “being able to solve problems,” received the USSR State Prize for science.
EGSVTS emerged as a network of approximately 50 powerful support centers (SC), regional information storage devices, regional switches (with these goals in mind, the Dnepr-2 machine was developed at the institute), information flows connected to each other in the network by broadband communication channels (it was believed that this could there may also be television channels). The main computer center of the network represented the first level of the Unified State Computer Center, the OCs constituted the second level of the Unified State Computer Center. The Main Computer Center and the Central Center were the main nodes of the network. The support centers were connected through local communication channels by grassroots centers (NCs) and computer service centers (CSCs) - together they constituted the third level of the network (estimates showed that the country would need about 300 - 400 CSCs and about 7000 CSs). Each support center should become a regional switching center; the lower centers, as a rule, were computer control centers. OVCs (later they were called computer centers for collective use of the VTsKP) could be part of, as a rule, cluster scientific centers, with which information (information and dispatch) bureaus of enterprises were contacted. OVCs could provide computer support to enterprises that do not have their own computer centers or are equipped with low-performance equipment, or that occasionally solve extremely complex design and planning problems.
The task of the Unified State Control Center is to ensure the implementation of information processes in the planning and accounting system in the country, including jointly solved tasks, for which a State Management Committee (GosKomUpr) responsible for the trouble-free operation of the network should also be created, and as part of the Unified State Control Center, in its OC - information - control centers that manage the work of this “information processing industry.”
Academician Glushkov emphasized that, despite the upcoming multi-billion dollar costs and, in general, the high cost of implementing the proposed project, the uniformity of solutions in the network will save significant funds on its creation and operation than if you let the creation of the network take its course - wait for the coordination of individual territorial and industry decisions.
As for the cost of the project, the grandeur of its implementation was comparable only to the implementation of Lenin’s GOELRO or the USSR space program. The implementation of OGAS was planned to be carried out over three five-year plans. The cost was estimated at 20 billion rubles. However, according to Glushkov’s calculations, OGAS was capable of bringing in 100 billion rubles in those same years. Soviet Union.
And yet, the most difficult thing that lay ahead when discussing the EGSVTS project at the “very top” was what the effectiveness of the system actually consists of, how much this tool is really needed for which the network was conceived - the function of managing the country’s economy, computerized management in the conditions of the current EGSVTS. Taking into account the specifics of the protection of the project (at the pre-draft level), everything here was interpreted quite simply - in order to make what was proposed understandable and convince of the feasibility of implementing the project.
It was assumed that by the time of the implementation of the Unified State Control Center, many enterprises would have automated control systems or their “start-up complexes”, interfaced with the planned planning system. The planning system was interpreted as that system of accounting and planning that was carried out through the Central Statistical Office: the accepted aggregation of accounting data and production plans, material needs, accepted statistics and the identification of imbalances in them. This system was presented as similar to the iterative Seidel scheme in the Leontief model ("input-output") - only the slowness of the counting and perforation technology and the antediluvian data transfer slow down the execution of iterations, so that in the current system of "balance sheet planning" one has to limit oneself to 2-3 iterations at making plans. For many enterprises and sectors of the economy, this is enough - their plans essentially change little from year to year (consumer products, stable supply contracts). And if you increase the iterations to 8, which is what the Unified State Statistics Service allows you to do, this may turn out (especially when assessing plans before attaching suppliers to consumers) to be sufficient for other parts of the national economy. It is also obvious that target programs are formed by qualified teams and there the need for iterative adjustment is also insignificant, especially if they are implemented computerized. Technologies for in-production planning and management were already known to developers not only in relation to the defense industry, but even in agricultural production. This knowledge and previously completed developments contributed to fairly plausible estimates (not refuted either during the defense of the project or later) of both the volume of stored information and data flows in the Unified State Data Center, an approximate list of tasks to be solved and functions performed, and technical parameters of the system.
The “second approach to the projectile” took place in the 1970s. By this time, several electronic networks already existed in the world, and Glushkov could use the experience accumulated during their operation. Now it was planned to base the GSVC on a backbone network of especially powerful shared computing centers (VCCC). The entire territory of the USSR was (according to the plan) to be divided into regions, in each of which a VTsKP was created, to which computer centers and terminals at enterprises and economic management bodies were connected through local communication lines. In this way, users from any region and any department could quickly communicate with each other. It was proposed to create a ministry or state computer science committee to manage this network. In its completed form, the GSVC would have to consist of approximately 200 VTsKP, several tens of thousands of departmental computer centers and several million terminals. For several particularly important subscribers (class of the USSR State Planning Committee) it was planned to create a subnetwork on broadband channels. The supporting VTsKPs were assigned the following functions:
1. storage of regional databases;
2. solving socio-economic problems of a regional and interregional nature;
3. solving problems for subscribers who do not have their own computer centers;
4. provision of reserve power when solving particularly large problems, which made it possible to calculate the power of the GSVC not for peak, but for average loads, due to which the cost of the project was slightly reduced.
Obstacles
From the very beginning, Glushkov's project met with resistance. Even the first reviewer of the project, M.V. Keldysh, proposed to exclude from it non-cash payments, which could cause “unnecessary emotions.”
The first critic of the project was V.N. Stavrovsky, the head of the Central Statistical Office of the USSR, the body to which the project itself was addressed. The commission tried to exclude almost all of its economic part from the project, leaving only the idea of the network.
As a result of the first round of discussions, the negative position of the CSB was recorded and at a meeting of the Presidium of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, the project was returned to the CSB and the Ministry of Radio Industry.
After “revision” at the CSB, the OGAS project, in the words of Glushkov himself, turned into a “hodgepodge.”
At the same time, the economic group persuaded Kosygin to abandon Glushkov’s project in favor of economic reform, citing the fact that the paper for orders would cost less than the 20 billion OGAS.
Kosygin, like his early predecessors, followed the well-trodden path of administrative methods of economic reforms, although the project was not completely lost sight of. Perhaps the chairman of the Council of Ministers wanted to use the Glushkov project as an additional positive source for the economic reform already begun in 1965.
The authorities' interest in the project re-emerged in the late 60s, when it became known that the Americans had already created their own networks, similar to those proposed by Glushkov: ARPANET and SEYBARPANET.
This time the obstacle was the shortcomings of the political apparatus of the Soviet government. Glushkov recalls: “The fact is that Korolev or Kurchatov had a boss from the Politburo, and they could come to him and immediately resolve any issue. Our problem was that in our work there was no such person. But the questions here were more complex, because they involved politics, and any mistake could have tragic consequences. Therefore, communication with one of the members of the Politburo was all the more important, because this is not only a scientific and technical task, but above all a political one.”
At the decisive meeting of the Politburo, which again became interested in the finalized project, Finance Minister Garbuzov opposed it. In addition, neither Brezhnev (who was in Baku) nor Kosygin (who had left for Nasser’s funeral) were present at the meeting. He tried to ridicule the project, proposed to build only a grassroots network, and later told Kosygin that the State Committee for Economic Development (the apparatus that would be headed by OGAS) would allow the Central Committee to control the activities of the ministries and Kosygin himself.
Finally, it is necessary to note an external factor: the Western press published articles designed to denigrate the Glushkov project in the eyes of the Soviet leadership and intelligentsia. The Washington Post published an article, “The Punch Card Rules the Kremlin,” in which the Soviet nomenklatura was threatened with being replaced by Glushkov’s computers. The British Guardian published an article suggesting that Glushkov's machines would become tools in the hands of the KGB to control Soviet citizens.
“At the beginning of 1972, Izvestia published an article “Lessons from the Electronic Boom,” written by Milner, deputy director of the Institute of the United States of America, G. A. Arbatov. In it, he tried to prove that in the United States the demand for computing machines had fallen. In a number of memos to the CPSU Central Committee from economists who went on business trips to the United States, the use of computer technology to manage the economy was equated to the fashion for abstract painting. They say that capitalists buy cars only because it is fashionable, so as not to seem out of date. This all disoriented the management.
The reports that were sent to the Central Committee of the CPSU were, in my opinion, a skillfully organized disinformation campaign by the American CIA against attempts to improve our economy. They correctly calculated that such sabotage is the easiest way to win economic competition, cheap and sure. I was able to do something to counteract this. I asked our scientific adviser in Washington to compile a report on how the popularity of cars in the United States actually “fell”, which former Ambassador Dobrynin sent to the CPSU Central Committee. Such reports, especially those from the leading power, were sent to all members of the Politburo and they read them. The calculation turned out to be correct, and this softened the blow a little. So it was not possible to completely eliminate the topic of automated control systems.”
Despite the fact that then, in 1965, economic ignorance triumphed, which two decades later led the country to disaster, Viktor Mikhailovich Glushkov did not stop fighting for his idea for a minute. Until his last breath, he remained a passionate promoter of OGAS and did everything to implement it in life. Already being mortally ill, knowing that the denouement would come within a few days, he dictated his thoughts into a tape recorder, in which he seemed to sum up his life, the activities of the teams he led, expressed his assessments of certain decisions of the party and government in the field development of computer technology and economic management. These notes were published under the title “Treasured thoughts for those who remain” in the book “Academician Glushkov - Pioneer of Cybernetics” published on the 80th anniversary of the scientist’s birth.
V.M. Glushkov at a press conference, 1964The problems of the scientific structure of society have worried scientists for centuries. For a long time people have tried to understand its essence. The greatest minds struggled with this, during which many hypotheses, theories, and utopias appeared. As social relations spontaneously changed, the idea of them also changed. The task of thinkers of all times was to establish the dominance of reason over the spontaneity of human actions, or at least to understand the nature of these actions. Unfortunately, today's social relations can be characterized as spontaneous, despite the fact that there are a number of sciences that describe them. The main disadvantage is that they only describe existing relationships, while using outdated scientific methods. The difference between real progressive science is that it can give not only a description, but also a logical explanation of the causes of phenomena based on their essence, and accordingly give a forecast - where and how to develop, based on what will be better from the point of view of the development of society as a whole, rather than individual groups of people or countries.
Scientists have long come to the conclusion that it is impossible to properly organize the lives of people in society without properly organizing the economy. The modern economy is built on the basis of the law of supply and demand in the market. In each individual case, everything seems to happen according to the will of people, but if you take not two people, but more, then it will be more difficult for them all to come to an agreement, therefore the measure of exchange of goods - the price - will be set as the average. Nothing depends on an individual, as well as on an entire group - the price is to become a superhuman force that controls their behavior in the market. It is impossible to know the required quantity of products in advance; people release goods to the market at random. Therefore, if we take the scale of the country, it becomes completely impossible to consciously manage economic processes. What people can do in this case is, having established patterns, try not to upset the balance of supply and demand, so that exactly as much products are produced as needed. And perhaps this would have been possible, but humanity produces so many things that it is impossible to know the required quantity of goods. Even though huge efforts of enterprises and corporations are aimed at calculation and forecasting, the world is increasingly suffering from periodic crises of overproduction. The need for scientific methods is increasingly felt.
In the twentieth century, along with the development of a number of fundamental sciences, a new interdisciplinary science emerged - cybernetics. Cybernetics scientists have set themselves the goal of forming the principles of scientific organization of management in society through the correct exchange of information. The American scientist Norbert Wiener is considered the founding father of cybernetics. He outlined the basic principles of this science, but cybernetics did not receive much development in the USA. Of all the variety of aspects of this science, only the development and production of computers has received proper development.
The greatest contribution to the development of cybernetics was made by our compatriot Viktor Mikhailovich Glushkov. For more than twenty-five years he was the head of the largest scientific center in cybernetics and computer technology - the Institute of Cybernetics of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. Under his leadership, several generations of computers were created, which at one time were the best examples in the world. But the main work of his life was the creation of an automated economic management system (OGAS).
This task was set by the government based on the economic difficulties of the early 60s. The peculiarity of the Soviet economy was that market mechanisms were limited and proper planning based on mathematical calculation was required for effective management. The more the Soviet economy grew, the more difficult it became to make calculations. Naturally, this applied not only to the USSR, but where the means of production are privately owned, management within the economy as a whole was in principle impossible due to commercial secrets, which make it impossible to obtain the necessary operational information for calculations.
Glushkov said in this regard that society in its history has experienced two management crises, the so-called. "information barriers". At first there were no problems: the material base was poor due to primitive tools, and accordingly human activity was primitive. The “first information barrier” arose in the conditions of the decomposition of the communal clan economy due to the development of labor tools. The solution to the problem was the emergence of commodity-money relations and the establishment of a hierarchical management system, when the senior boss controls the junior ones, and they then control the performers. Simply put, division of labor and exchange between individual producers appeared.
Since the 30s of the twentieth century, Glushkov believes, it has become obvious that a “second information barrier” is approaching, when neither hierarchy in management nor commodity-money relations help. The reason for such a crisis is the inability of even many people to manage the economy. Viktor Mikhailovich said that in the 30s, in order to solve the problems of managing our then economy, it was necessary to perform about 1014 mathematical operations per year, and in the mid-70s - already about 1016. If we accept that one person without the help of technology is able to perform on average 106 transactions, that is, 1 million transactions per year, this means that about 10 billion people are needed in order for the economy to remain well managed. The only way out is to use electronic computers (computers) to process economic information, which are both faster and more accurate than humans.
Naturally, it was assumed not just computers, but a network of computers throughout the country - a prototype of the Internet, or rather a network, functionally much wider, in which the modern Internet would be only one of the components.
By mid-1964, Glushkov developed a preliminary design for OGAS. It was assumed that all production information directly from enterprises with an automated control system (ACS) would go to the control systems of the regions (RASU) and then to the industries (OACS). The network was supposed to unite 100-200 large computing centers in industrial cities and economic centers. From there, the processed information was sent to a single national center. Feedback mechanisms were used to monitor execution and constantly adjust management decisions. That is, the system easily worked in conditions of constant changes in the production environment and could independently adjust decisions in simple situations. In practice, this would lead to a gradual transfer of control levers from the bureaucratic apparatus to more advanced “bodies”. After all, an electronic machine would make decisions faster, and calculate many more options, and would not rush home at the end of the working day, and would not do anything “out of pull.” In addition to simply speeding up information processing, this made it possible to calculate all production needs in advance and optimize efforts and resources.
Given the enormous computational speeds, the production process could be controlled in real time, eliminating errors and shortcomings “on the fly.” For a market economy this task is insoluble. For example, according to the calculations of the famous cyberneticist Stafford Beer back in the early 70s, in order to find out the result of any government actions in the economy, one had to wait 9 months - this is the average time for receiving economic indicators and processing them by bureaucratic authorities. Since the mechanisms of a market economy are very intricate, the result can only be seen by what the profit will ultimately be. But profit also shows the reaction to the entire set of actions and decisions, and not to any specific ones. Therefore, you often have to act “blindly”. But for an economy built according to a scientific type, the measure is not profit, but accurate calculation.
Glushkov proposed introducing electronic money 20 years earlier than in the West. To settle accounts with the population in the “transition” period, they would logically take on the functions of “real” money and gradually displace them. Thus, science replaced market methods. Finding a specific technical implementation for making payments between each individual person with the state and with another person in everyday life without money is not a difficult matter. For example, now almost every person has a mobile phone. Technically very simple to implement, you can manage your e-account from your mobile phone from anywhere you have coverage. In this case, the need for a wallet disappears by itself.
A huge advantage over Western countries was that we had a planned economy, there was state ownership, there was no competition and no trade secrets, which made it possible to combine efforts, easily collect and process information for reasonable economic management. This same fact filled the phenomenon of electronic money with a completely different essence than in Western countries. A scientifically based forecast calculated using a computer could smoothly turn into a state plan, the implementation of which, using the same system for collecting and automated processing of information, could be monitored in detail in real time and adjustments could be made on the fly, both in plans and in progress their execution.
Here it is necessary to make a reservation in order to get rid of unnecessary illusions and misconceptions regarding OGAS. No one considered OGAS a panacea, or thought that the introduction of the system would immediately solve all economic problems. Moreover, no one thought that a machine would drive instead of a person. A machine, according to Glushkov, is only a tool that greatly enhances human capabilities in the field of management. Thanks to OGAS, managers at all levels would have the opportunity to always receive fresh, accurate and timely data, and make decisions based on them. The system also simplified management, therefore not so many bosses were required - this made it possible to significantly reduce, and later completely abandon, bureaucracy.
Unfortunately, in 1965 the project was rejected by the government - it was considered that it required too many funds and could be done without it, partially by strengthening market methods of government. To which Glushkov replied that by the mid-80s the USSR would face great economic difficulties. His prediction was completely justified.
The development of cybernetics did not stop there, but it lost its main goal - to help society scientifically organize its life. OGAS was introduced only partially - in the form of automatic control systems at enterprises. But partial methods did not solve the problem.
Nevertheless, Viktor Mikhailovich continued to develop his views. For example, this problem: how to calculate the need for a particular product? In a market economy, this can be recognized by the relationship between supply and demand. And if we take the same market economy, but in a more mature form - in the form of monopolies and corporations, then they no longer rely on this law. There are no different producers, there is one producer and many consumers with different tastes. If everything is done in an assembly line manner, the product turns out monotonous. On the other hand, the conveyor method is the most effective. What to do, where is the “conveyor threshold”? It turned out that this problem is easily solved. For example, the French company Renault already made more than half of its cars to individual orders. Although the “conveyor threshold” was very high. It’s just that at the final stage they directly found out what color would suit the future owner, what kind of upholstery, what special little things. Using a system like OGAS, you can find out the need for any product and not produce excess. And if you throw a product on the market in the hope that someone will buy it, this is a huge waste.
Glushkov paid much attention to forecasting. To create a science-based plan, he said, it is necessary to create a multivariate hypothesis that estimates the relative importance of various specific goals, as well as the time and resources it will take to achieve them. It is impossible to calculate an accurate forecast without a computer, but a computer by itself is not enough. It must be associated with the predicted process in order to constantly receive information. The faster and more often, the more accurate the forecast will be. In this case, it is desirable that all circumstances affecting the process be taken into account. For example, you need to build a modern plant. Construction is expected to take 5 years. For effective construction, you need to take into account a lot: materials, transport, availability of funds, labor, improvement of technology over these 5 years. No director, even with a huge team of managers, can do this like an automated computer system. But for calculations, it is necessary to receive all the necessary information in a timely manner, therefore, those bodies that are responsible for materials, transport, labor, technology must provide this information on time, i.e., also be automated and connected into one network. This will make the facility faster, more reliable, and cheaper. Here the forecast is made not on speculation, or even on the opinions of experts, but on mathematical calculations, which is much more reliable. There is practically no difference between such a forecast and a plan. It’s not for nothing that professionals say that the best forecast is a plan.
Everyone knows that the world is constantly changing, therefore, we must be prepared for this. Humanity must organize its activities, including production, in such a way as to constantly take changes into account; to anticipate them means to build your life consciously, and not rely on luck. A properly organized economy makes it possible to eliminate the remnants of the period of economic disaster and step over the “second information barrier.” This means correctly distributing both resources and a person’s time, not wasting them, spending them on the development of a person as an individual, and not as a cog in a large mechanism.
An economy that is not built according to a scientific type literally becomes dangerous for people. A fictitious product is produced and offered on the market - a product that is intended to satisfy a non-existent need. As a result, unnecessary needs are produced, then they are fully satisfied, and all this is done with only one goal - to stimulate the market economy. Otherwise it will not function. As a result, today no more than 30% of goods meet basic human needs, and all other goods satisfy unnecessary needs. For example, the production of weapons creates the need for war. The arms trade is known to be the most profitable in the world. Homo sapiens has turned into a Consuming Man, and this is not only a moral problem. In order for some to consume without measure, others must engage in routine, exhausting work, deep down hoping to become the same consumers. For both some and others, this happens to the detriment of creativity and the development of their abilities.
The development of new economic ideas is hampered by the fact that the existing economy and economic theory are declared to be the only correct, eternal and unchangeable ones. The surrogate of economic theory that is taught in universities under the name “economics” has long been outdated. It should be replaced by modern economic theory, based on the latest achievements of science and technology, critical of any “eternal truths.” The world is changing every second, so the principle of development must be the basis of the new economy.
Already today, management within large corporations is built not on the basis of commodity-money exchange, but on scientific principles, based on the use of automated accounting and production control systems. Corporations are much more efficient than smaller forms of ownership, but they are only a stage towards further socialization, towards the establishment of a scientifically based method of production and distribution throughout society. A future without new economic relations between people is not the future, it is a lingering past. Therefore, it is now necessary to study and develop the principles of the economy of the future.
“A hundred times I have sworn this oath:
A hundred years in prison is better than a protoss,
I’ll soon pound a hundred mountains in a mortar,
How can I explain the truth to the idiot."
Bakhvalan Mahmud
August 24 marks the 90th anniversary of the birth of the great Soviet mathematician, cybernetics and one of the creators of the principles embedded in domestic early warning systems for missile attacks, as well as directly developing and implementing automated control systems at defense enterprises of the Soviet Union.
Viktor Mikhailovich Glushko was born into a mining family in the city of Shakhty, Rostov region on August 24, 1923.
On June 21, 1941, he graduated from secondary school No. 1 in the same city with a gold medal. The outbreak of the Great Patriotic War hit Viktor Mikhailovich hard - in the fall of 1941, his mother was killed by the Nazis.
After the liberation of the city of Shakhty by Soviet troops, Glushkov was mobilized and participated in the restoration of Donbass coal mines.
After the end of the war, he brilliantly graduated from the Faculty of Mathematics of Rostov University. In his thesis, he developed methods for calculating tables of improper integrals, having discovered inaccuracies in existing tables that had previously gone through 10-12 editions.
After 1948, a young promising mathematician was assigned to the Urals to a secret institution involved in the atomic project.
Head of the Department of Theoretical Mechanics of the Ural Forestry Institute. The topic of his doctoral dissertation, successfully defended at the dissertation council of Moscow State University on December 12, 1955, is devoted to the proof of Hilbert’s fifth problem.
In the late fifties, the scientist became interested in the possibilities of rapidly developing electronic computing technology.
Remaining after moving from Kyiv to Moscow S.A. Lebedev, his laboratory, in which the first computer-MESM in the USSR and continental Europe was created, was transferred to the Institute of Mathematics of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, whose director B.V. Gnedenko invited Glushkov to head it in 1956. Having moved, from August 1956 he lived and worked in Kyiv. In 1956, he became the head of the laboratory of computer technology at the Institute of Mathematics of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR at the invitation of its director.
Laboratory employee Z.L. Rabinovich noted in his memoirs that with the arrival of Glushkov, “not a single one of the works carried out in the laboratory was abandoned. On the contrary, everything received a logical conclusion.”
Viktor Mikhailovich's further activities were entirely related to computer technology - in December 1957, on the basis of his laboratory, the Computing Center of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR was created, of which he became the director. And in December 1962, on the basis of the Computer Center of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, the Institute of Cybernetics of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR was created, of which Glushkov also became its director.
From 1958 to 1961, the Dnepr computer was developed, which was actively used in a wide variety of sectors of the national economy of the USSR.
A complex of two Dnepr computers (standing behind the screen) at the space flight control center. Information from 150 sensors enters the complex, which displays the satellite’s trajectory on the screen.
Viktor Mikhailovich was actively involved in teaching. Since 1956, he taught a course in higher algebra and a special course on the theory of digital automata at the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics of KSU, and from 1966 until the end of his life he headed the department of theoretical cybernetics.
From 1962 until the end of his life, vice-president of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR.
In 1963, Glushkov was approved as chairman of the Interdepartmental Scientific Council for the Introduction of Computer Science and Economic and Mathematical Methods into the National Economy of the USSR under the State Committee of the USSR Council of Ministers for Science and Technology.
Subsequently, Glushkov was directly involved in the development and implementation of automatic production control systems (APS) in the national economy, published scientific works in the field of theoretical cybernetics, and was also asked to write an article about cybernetics in the Encyclopedia Britannica in 1973.
In 1965, under the leadership of Glushkov, the first in the series of computers for engineering calculations, MIR-1, was created.
Machine for engineering calculations MIR11966
He was a member of the USSR State Committee for Science and Technology and the Committee for Lenin and State Prizes under the Council of Ministers of the USSR. He was an advisor to the UN Secretary General on cybernetics. More than one hundred dissertations were defended under his leadership.
Glushkov was the initiator and main ideologist of the development and creation of the National Automated System of Accounting and Information Processing (OGAS), intended for automated management of the entire economy of the USSR as a whole. To do this, he developed a system of algorithmic algebras and a theory for managing distributed databases.
At this stage of his life it is worth dwelling in more detail. The following is quoted from the book by B.N. Malinovsky "Computer technology in faces".
The task of building a national automated management system (OGAS) for the economy was set to Glushkov by the First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers (then A.N. Kosygin) in November 1962.
V.M. Glushkov, V.S. Mikhalevich, A.I. Nikitin et al. developed the first draft design of the Unified State Network of Computer Centers of the Unified State Computer Center, which included about 100 centers in large industrial cities and centers of economic regions, united by broadband communication channels. These centers, distributed throughout the country, in accordance with the configuration of the system, are combined with others involved in processing economic information. We then estimated their number at 20 thousand. These are large enterprises, ministries, as well as cluster centers that served small enterprises. Characteristic was the presence of a distributed data bank and the possibility of addressless access from any point in this system to any information after automatic verification of the authority of the requesting person. A number of issues related to information security have been developed. In addition, in this two-tier system, the main computer centers exchange information with each other not by switching channels and switching messages, as is customary now, broken down into letters, I proposed connecting these 100 or 200 centers with broadband channels, bypassing the channel-forming equipment so that it is possible it was possible to rewrite information from a magnetic tape in Vladivostok to a tape in Moscow without reducing the speed. Then all protocols are greatly simplified and the network acquires new properties. The project was secret until 1977.
Unfortunately, after the commission reviewed the project, almost nothing remained of it, the entire economic part was removed, and only the network itself remained. The seized materials were destroyed and burned, as they were secret.
V.N. began to sharply object to the entire project as a whole. Starovsky, head of the Central Bureau of Investigation. His objections were demagogic. Glushkov insisted on such a new accounting system so that any information could be immediately obtained from any point. And he referred to the fact that the Central Statistical Office was organized on Lenin’s initiative, and it copes with the tasks set by him; managed to obtain assurances from Kosygin that the information that the CSB gives to the government is sufficient for management, and therefore nothing needs to be done.
Beginning in 1964 (the time my project appeared), economists Lieberman, Belkin, Birman and others began to openly speak out against Glushkov, many of whom later left for the USA and Israel. Kosygin, being a very practical person, became interested in the possible cost of our project. According to preliminary estimates, its implementation would cost 20 billion rubles. The bulk of the work can be done in three five-year plans, but only on the condition that this program is organized in the same way as the atomic and space ones. Glushkov did not hide from Kosygin that it is more complex than the space and atomic programs combined and much more difficult organizationally, since it affects everything and everyone: industry, trade, planning bodies, the sphere of government, etc. Although the cost of the project was approximately estimated at 20 billion rubles, the working scheme for its implementation provided that the first 5 billion rubles invested in the first five-year plan would yield a return of more than 5 billion at the end of the five-year period, since self-sufficiency of costs for the program was envisaged. And in just three five-year plans, the implementation of the program would bring at least 100 billion rubles to the budget. And this is still a very underestimated figure.
But our would-be economists confused Kosygin by saying that economic reform would cost nothing at all, i.e. will cost exactly as much as the cost of the paper on which the resolution of the Council of Ministers will be printed, and will yield more as a result. Therefore, Glushkov’s team was put aside and, moreover, they began to be treated with caution. And Kosygin was unhappy. Glushkov was ordered to temporarily stop promoting OGAS and work on lower-level systems. As it turned out later, this was the beginning of the end of the grandiose project.
There are several reasons for this, but the main role was played by the inertia of thinking of some responsible party functionaries. This can best be illustrated with the help of a fragment of Viktor Mikhailovich’s memoirs about a Politburo meeting held after the Soviet leadership began to receive information that back in 1966 the Americans had made a preliminary design of an information network (more precisely, several networks), i.e. . two years later than us. Unlike us, they did not argue, but did, and in 1969 they planned to launch the ARPANET network, and then SEYBARPANET, etc., connecting computers that were installed in various cities in the USA.
The same fragment contains Glushkov’s gloomy prophecy about the beginning of the economic decline of the USSR in the late 70s. The notes in parentheses are mine.
“...Garbuzov (Minister of Finance of the USSR) spoke in such a way that what he said was suitable for an anecdote. He went to the podium and addressed Mazurov (he was then Kosygin’s first deputy). So, Kirill Trofimovich, on your instructions I went to Minsk, and we inspected poultry farms. And there, on such and such a poultry farm (he named it), the poultry workers themselves developed a computer.
Then I laughed out loud. He shook his finger at me and said: “You, Glushkov, don’t laugh, they are talking about serious things here.” But Suslov interrupted him: “Comrade Garbuzov, you are not the chairman here yet, and it is not your job to restore order at the Politburo meeting.” And he, as if nothing had happened, such a self-confident and narcissistic person, continues: “He performs three programs: he turns on the music when the chicken has laid an egg, turns the lights off and on, and so on. On the farm, egg production has increased.” Here, he says, what we need to do: first, automate all poultry farms in the Soviet Union, and then think about all sorts of stupid things like a national system. (And I actually laughed here, not then.) Okay, that’s not the point.
A counterproposal was made, which reduced everything by an order of magnitude: instead of the State Committee for Computer Science - the Main Directorate for Computer Science at the State Committee for Science and Technology, instead of the scientific center - VNIIPOU, etc. And the task remained the same, but it became more technical, i.e. changed towards the State Network of Computer Centers, and as for the economy, the development of mathematical models for OGAS, etc. - it was all blurred.
At the end, Suslov speaks and says: “Comrades, maybe we are making a mistake now by not accepting the project in full, but this is such a revolutionary transformation that it is difficult for us to implement it now. Let’s try like this for now, and then we will see how to be" And he asks not Kirillina, but me: "What do you think?" And I say: “Mikhail Andreevich, I can only tell you one thing: if we don’t do this now, then in the second half of the 70s the Soviet economy will face such difficulties that we will still have to return to this issue.” But they didn’t take my opinion into account and accepted the counterproposal.”
Ironically, the unrealized ideas contained in OGAS were developed in the organization of an early warning system for a missile attack, which was actively built in the USSR in the seventies.
In addition, on his initiative and under his active leadership, automated control systems began to be introduced at defense enterprises of the Soviet Union.
Viktor Mikhailovich Glushkov and Admiral of the Fleet Sergei Georgievich Gorshkov (left). The automation system for the design of underwater vessels, created at the Institute of Cybernetics and its Special Design Bureau, has been put into operation. 70s of the XX century
Alas, the scientist’s long-term struggle with inertia and bureaucracy was not in vain for him - in the fall of 1981, Viktor Mikhailovich’s health condition worsened.
A year later, on January 30, 1982, after a long illness, he died in Moscow at the Central Clinical Hospital and was buried in Kyiv at the Baikovo cemetery.
Viktor Mikhailovich was awarded a large number of high government awards, including three Orders of Lenin and the Order of the October Revolution. Winner of the Lenin Prize and twice winner of the USSR State Prize. Hero of Socialist Labor.
When writing the article, materials from the popular science magazine “Propaganda” (http://propaganda-journal.net/636.html), the book “How OGAS went out”, and the book by Academician V. Glushkov were used. Pages of life and creativity. Malinovsky B.N. - Kyiv: Naukova Dumka, 1993. - 140 p. and the museum “History of the Development of Information Technologies in Ukraine” (http://www.icfcst.kiev.ua/MUSEUM/about_r.html).
“The day is not far when ordinary books, newspapers and magazines will disappear. Each person will carry an electronic notepad - a combination of a flat-panel display with a miniature radio transceiver. By typing the required code on the keyboard of this notepad, you can, from anywhere on the planet, call up texts and images from giant computer databases, which will replace not only books, magazines and newspapers, but also televisions,”-Soviet cyberneticist Viktor Glushkov wrote in the early 1980s in his book “Fundamentals of Paperless Computer Science.”
There were still two decades left before the mass distribution of the Internet, tablets and smartphones.
Glushkov is considered one of the “fathers of Soviet cybernetics.” In addition to interesting and accurate forecasts about gadgets and technologies, his most famous project is the unification of all enterprises in the country into the Nationwide Automated Network (OGAS).
Many of Glushkov’s students and followers are confident that OGAS could have saved the Soviet Union from collapse, since “manual” administrative-command management of such a complex economy was ultimately doomed to failure. It makes no sense to speak in the subjunctive moods, but there is some truth in these arguments. Life has shown that many of the ideas of cybernetics turned out to be in demand already in the 21st century. Glushkov “predicted” the emergence of mobile devices, car navigators, electronic currency and electronic document management, as well as partly the Internet.
But let's go back to the beginning.
By the 1960s, the USSR economy was faced with the problem of processing a colossal amount of information for planning and making management decisions. The number of products manufactured in the country has increased, it has become more complex, and the connections of enterprises have become more extensive. To maintain the coordinated work of all enterprises in different industries, new approaches to solving problems were required. Cybernetics scientists became interested in the problem. For example, according to their calculations, in order to find out the result of any government actions in the economy, it was necessary to wait 9 months - this is the average time for receiving indicators and processing them by bureaucratic authorities.
In 1958, military programmer and developer Anatoly Kitov proposed creating a Unified State Network of Computer Centers (USNC), with the help of which it would be possible to simultaneously manage the armed forces and the economy. The network was supposed to be deployed on the basis of computer centers of the Ministry of Defense. In peacetime, these centers were supposed to solve the economic, scientific and technical problems of enterprises. In the event of military conflicts, the system could be reconfigured to suit the appropriate needs. These powerful computing centers were to be maintained by military personnel, and access to the centers was supposed to be made remote.
The scientist wrote in detail about his project to Nikita Khrushchev several times. The leadership of the USSR partially supported Kitov's proposals for the accelerated creation of new computers and their widespread use in various areas of economic life. But the authorities did not accept the basic idea of automating economic management of the entire USSR, essentially rejecting Kitov’s main project.
Then Kitov’s idea was picked up by academician Viktor Glushkov. He named his project OGAS (National Automated Network). The young scientist had experience in managing a large computer center and the Institute of Cybernetics at the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, as well as participation in the development of the Dnepr digital computer and the first personal computer in the USSR, Mir-1. By the way, Dnepr appeared almost simultaneously with its American counterparts and could perform up to 35 thousand operations per second.
Mass production of computers in the Soviet Union coincided with the urgent need to transition the country's economy to a new technical level. Being one of the most competent automation specialists in the country, Glushkov proposed solving the problem using a computer.
The scientist enlisted the support of Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers Andrei Kosygin and began working on the creation of automated control systems (ACS). Kitov became Glushkov’s deputy for several years.
It is noteworthy that OGAS was not the only attempt to “change the game” using technology and electronic data interchange. In the early 1970s, it worked relatively successfully in Chile under President Allende, but due to a military coup, the futuristic project was curtailed. The USSR still had plenty of time and resources ahead to conduct such experiments, so the OGAS project on paper turned out to be hundreds and thousands of times larger in scale. All that remained was to make a political decision and allocate resources.
Victor Glushkov (1982):
- Increasing the power of the administrative apparatus cannot be achieved within the framework of traditional paper technology by equipping people with tools that operate in bulk. Complex automation is required, in which most of the information flows are closed outside the person. This is the essence of paperless technology. A person’s responsibilities will be reduced to setting tasks, choosing the final options for management decisions and informal work with people.
Before starting the design of his supersystem, Glushkov studied in detail the work of factories, mines, railways, airports, state farms, Gosplan, Gossnab, and the Ministry of Finance, understanding all the tasks and stages of planning, as well as the difficulties that arise.
The OGAS sketch was ready by 1964. The project envisaged the creation of 100 centers in large industrial cities, from where already processed information would be sent to a single national center. These centers should have been interconnected by broadband communication channels and connected to 10 thousand centers of enterprises and organizations. A computer-calculated and scientifically based forecast in the economy could turn into a state plan.
The network was supposed to provide complete automation of the process of collecting, transmitting and processing primary data. In the Soviet Union at that time, there were rules for collecting information through four parallel channels, controlled by planning, supply, statistics and finance authorities independent from each other. The authors of the project proposed to enter economic data into the system only once. All information was supposed to be stored in central data banks with remote access to them from anywhere in the system after automatic user verification.
Glushkov and his associates hoped, with the help of computers, to completely eliminate the widespread practice of falsifying data transmitted to the top. It was impossible to implement the project under private ownership, since the presence of a trade secret made it impossible to collect the necessary data for making calculations.
Victor Glushkov (1982):
- If there is an automatic traffic control center in the city that is capable of transmitting information via radio about the current traffic situation, closed passages, and traffic jams, an on-board micro-computer navigator will be useful. By entering into it a task for a trip, the coordinates of the starting and ending points, it will be possible in a matter of seconds to receive from the computer the optimal route of movement, taking into account the current situation.
Glushkov’s original plan included one more provision. The cybernetician believed that the new automated control system would control production, salary payments, and retail trade. He proposed eliminating paper money from circulation and completely switching to electronic payments. In addition, the system had to collect and analyze data on significant purchases by citizens.
The network was supposed to go into operation in 1975. The main opponents of the project were economists. Despite the fact that the system expected payback and profit of up to 100 billion rubles in 15 years by solving economic and engineering problems, the costs of launching OGAS outweighed expectations. According to various estimates, to launch OGAS it was necessary to find up to 20 billion rubles and train 300 thousand new specialists.
In 1970, the Politburo discussed the OGAS project, adopting it in a stripped down form. Instead of introducing a National Automated Economic Management System, it was decided to focus on developing a network of computer centers and creating automated control systems at individual enterprises. Ministries began to build their own computer centers for internal needs. Over five years, the number of automated control systems in the country increased 7 times, but it quickly became clear that industry-specific automated control systems used incompatible hardware and software, and were not connected by an interdepartmental network. It was impossible to combine all this infrastructure into a single system.
Glushkov prepared an even more global project, which envisaged the emergence by 1990 of 200 centers for collective use in large cities, 2.5 thousand cluster centers for enterprises in one city or industry, and 22.5 thousand centers for individual enterprises. OGAS 2.0 already required 40 billion rubles.
Subsequent congresses of the CPSU repeatedly approved updated versions of OGAS, but attempts to create a unified network did not reach a nationwide scale. Over ten years, from 1976 to 1985, 21 shared computing centers were built in the country, which served 2 thousand enterprises. Attempts to unite several centers into a network remained at the experimental level. Remote user access did not work. Due to the poor quality of the channels, communication was often interrupted and operating system programs froze. Users were forced to work with a large volume of punched cards and printouts - electronic data exchange could only be a dream.
The cyberneticist noted that the Soviet statistics and planning bodies, even in the 1970s, were equipped with calculating and analytical machines of the 1939 model, which by that time had been completely replaced in America by computers.
The project never found its “investor” in the state, ready to invest in infrastructure development, as planned in OGAS.
Victor Glushkov (1982):
- Books, newspapers, magazines, being convenient and familiar to humans, will retain basically their current form for a long time. First of all, office correspondence should be reduced to the maximum extent possible. A person who at the beginning of the 21st century will not be able to use information will be like a person at the beginning of the 20th century who could neither read nor write. Every educated person should be familiar with the basics of paperless computer science.
Analyzing the reasons for the failures, Viktor Glushkov noted that OGAS was much more complex than a nuclear or space research program. This scared off officials. In addition, such a system could seriously affect the political and social aspects of life. In the Age of Stagnation, such a development of events was unacceptable.
There is a story about how, at one of the Politburo meetings, the Minister of Finance spoke about his trip to a poultry farm in Minsk, where poultry workers themselves allegedly “developed a computer” that “carried out three programs”: it turned on music when a chicken laid an egg, and turned on and off the lights. “Egg production has increased, so it is necessary to automate all poultry farms in the Soviet Union, and then think about all sorts of nonsense like a national system,” concludes a historical anecdote showing the conservative attitude of the bureaucracy towards innovation.
OGAS was partly the prototype of the Internet, but Glushkov himself understood this system as a kind of post-industrial society. He envisioned the creation of a powerful computer network nationwide, much wider than the Internet, with the help of which it would be possible to process, control and adjust management decisions, as well as change the very mechanism of economic management, giving the majority of operations to computer technology.
It is curious that Glushkov and his ideas were extremely valued in the West. The scientist traveled literally half the world. The Encyclopedia Britannica commissioned him to write an article on cybernetics, and the UN Secretary General appointed him as an adviser. IBM management invited Glushkov to give lectures in the United States and even offered him a high position in the field of development and research. He refused the last offer.
In 1982, Viktor Mikhailovich Glushkov died. The iPad, which automation evangelist Glushkov wrote about in the 1980s, was ultimately created not in the USSR, but in the USA.