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The Soviet InterNyet
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The Soviet InterNyet

Soviet scientists tried for decades to network their nation. What stalemated them is now fracturing the global internet

Benjamin Peters
Aeon, 2017
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Editorial Rating

7

Qualities

  • Eye Opening
  • Background
  • Engaging

Recommendation

In the second half of the 20th century, and in the middle of an exciting global race to build computer networks, the story of Russia’s self-disqualification teaches a valuable lesson. Assistant communications professor and author Benjamin Peters follows the fate of Soviet computer scientists who repeatedly failed to obtain the necessary support to develop and implement computer network technologies within Soviet government systems. As a result of bureaucracy and self-interest, the USSR failed to keep up with global advances in technology, and the United States created the Internet. getAbstract recommends Peters’s insights to world history buffs and technology wonks.

Take-Aways

  • After World World II, the original idea for a public computer network in Russia met with opposition from the Red Army, which didn’t want to share the use of its computers with civilians.
  • From 1962 to 1982, Russian computer scientist Viktor Glushkov led the Institute of Cybernetics, a research facility that worked on technological advances to serve the socialist government.
  • In 1970, Glushkov failed to secure funding from the Soviet Union government for the All-State Automated System (OGAS) – his national computer network plan.

About the Author

Benjamin Peters is an author and assistant professor of communication at the University of Tulsa. His latest book is How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet.

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