Imagine a world where the Internet, machine learning, neural networks and other gifts of modernity were created not in the West, but in the USSR. What a ridiculous fantasy, you say. But no - the Union really developed advanced technologies, which were called by the general word "cybernetics".
Soviet computer Setun.
Already in the late 50s, we could step into the future. But something went wrong.
Reactionary pseudoscience
In the middle of the 20th century, terms like "computer science" were not yet in use - instead they used the more general concept of cybernetics. Norbert Wiener, who published the book Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine in 1948, threw the word into the general public. The author came to the conclusion that there is no difference between the transfer of information in brain cells and computer circuits. Therefore, a machine, like an experimental rat or a bird, can be trained to make simple decisions. And with the development of technology and encroach on the sacred - to create digital intelligence, indistinguishable from human.
Wiener quickly became a rock star of science, and his ideas made a splash all over the world, except for the USSR: the comparison of glands with the brain was not appreciated here. And the management of society without Marxism-Leninism seemed seditious to the Soviet leaders. Here's how to explain to an electronic device what is communism in the Soviet way? What do you want to do with military doctrines? The author of Cybernetics put it this way:
If we program a machine to win a war, then we must be clear about how we understand victory. We cannot expect the machine to imitate us in the prejudices and emotional compromises that allow us to call destruction a victory. If we demand victory and do not know what we mean by this, we will face a ghost knocking on our door.
Promotional video:
Norbert Wiener, author of books on cybernetics.
Three years have passed since the Great Patriotic War, and someone already claims that the computer knows better, whose it took. What does this Wiener allow himself? But he has similar thoughts about politics, economics and other areas where computers predicted a great future. The work seemed to the Soviet ideologists not only insulting, but also harmful. Therefore, they were in no hurry to translate it, sending it out of harm's way to the special depositories of the library. Lenin.
Access to the book was left for the scientific and military elite. Marxism is Marxism, but smart missiles would be nice.
Literally: since 1950, the S-25 "Berkut" complex has been secretly developed, where data calculation from radars and control through a digital solver were used. The system was ahead of its Western counterparts by a good ten years, and, of course, it was obviously not without cybernetics.
The generals from the Ministry of Defense were interested in science - they understood there: without new technologies, saber rattling would not work. But what is permitted to Jupiter is not permitted to a bull. By the beginning of the 50s, a twofold situation had developed. On the one hand, access to cybernetics for mere mortals was closed, and in the press this area of knowledge was smashed to smithereens. On the other hand, military engineers calmly received all the necessary information, whether it be Western literature or blueprints stolen by spies.
Ural-1, computer in 1955.
For a long time, double standards could not exist - in 1959, former Deputy Defense Minister Axel Ivanovich Berg created the Scientific Council on Cybernetics. A unique case in history: high-browed science was nurtured and legalized by people in uniform. And they did not just open it to the broad masses, but showed the developments accumulated over the years of forced silence.
It turned out that the USSR did not live like a single bomb at that time - the country's mathematicians were also keen on other inventions that were ahead of their time.
For example, Alexey Lyapunov, one of the founders of Soviet cybernetics, proposed an operator programming method, invented by him in 1953. Instead of writing a program in the language of machines - a logic circuit that performs an operation at conditional addresses. Better yet, teach custom-made programs to assemble their similarities, at the same time checking the code for errors. Thanks to the mathematician, it became much easier to work with computers, and the computer began to solve more complex problems.
The sketches of a colleague were adopted by another bright mind - Mikhail Tsetlin. He believed that soulless technology was capable of imitating the behavior of a living being, and even wrote several breakthrough publications, sparking an interest in machine learning in the Union. Tsetlin's ideas are being watched even now - for example, a work has been published in Norway that predicts a great future for them.
Mikhail Tsetlin at work.
The USSR also responded to the Georgetown experiment on automatic text translation. Only if a computer manufactured by IBM was used overseas, then in Moscow they connected a local BESM to the task. In just a month and a half, engineers created the grandfather of Google Translate - the FR-1 system, which was designed to convert French phrases into Russian and vice versa.
Around the same time, the machine was first made to recognize images. Mathematician Yuri Zhuravlev worked on the problem. He built the whole process in two stages: distinguishing a set of features for classifying objects and finding an algorithm for carrying out this classification. A colleague of the scientist, Mikhail Bongard, drew attention to the complexity of the first stage and was able to simplify the procedure.
Of course, then no one dreamed of reading QR codes or automatically determining the breed of a cat by its appearance.
But at first these theories were useful to geologists looking for gold, and then they began to be used wherever the computer was required to "see". Need to digitize your physical manuscript in Times New Roman? Or turn spoken language into text? Sort the same cats? Please, Zhuravlev's developments still help to cope with such problems.
As for the ability of electronics to "hear", here one cannot pass by Rudolf Zaripov, who taught computers to compose music. The programmer has spent years trying to translate the laws of melodies into mathematical formulas. And he achieved the result long before the neural networks began to pour in chords. Moreover, his computer did not make music anyhow, but according to genres: you say to the hardware “invent a waltz” - it comes up with it.
Overtake without catching up
The peak of the development of cybernetics in the USSR is associated with the name of the engineer-colonel Anatoly Ivanovich Kitov. A man who became famous not only in our country, but also abroad. For example, here is what Professor Carr of the University of Michigan wrote about his work:
Anatoly Kitov.
Kitov's main idea was to automate the management of the country. More precisely, the creation of the EGSVTs (unified state network of computing centers). Back in 1959, together with Alexei Lyapunov, he made a presentation on the use of computers in the national economy. The scientist admitted that there are indeed more computers in the West and they are better used there. However, the Union could not only adopt the experience of the United States, but create the world's first global system. Say, why split the work front into narrow areas?
Not limited to public speaking, Kitov turned directly to the Kremlin. He sent Khrushchev a letter describing the underground bunkers with servers supporting the work of the all-Union computer network. In theory, it should manage not only the national economy, but also defense - imagine an automatic machine that launches missiles. Doesn't it look like anything?
Right. Here you and Skynet from the films about John Connor, and partly the American ARPANET, which gave birth to our beloved Internet.
Moreover, Kitov proposed this concept 10 years earlier. Only in this way, according to him, it was possible "to overtake the United States in the development and use of computers, without catching up with them." However, they did not react to the audacious venture. Then the scientist burst out with a second message, attaching a 200-page booklet to it. The project was called the "Red Book" and marked with the stamp "top secret". Khrushchev did not share the inspiration of the Colonel Engineer and simply sent the folder to the Ministry of Defense.
Nikita Khrushchev with Yuri Gagarin and Leonid Brezhnev.
There they created a commission headed by the war hero Marshal Rokossovsky. Colleagues gave the author of the project a thrashing. The generals did not like everything: criticism of the USSR for the lag in the production of computers, the idea of transferring the Soviet Skynet to military specialists, and, in principle, changing the methods of governing the country. As a result, Kitov was not only removed from all posts, but also kicked out of the party. Consider killed a career.
Even though those in power hated even the idea that a computer could make decisions for them, automation nevertheless reached the economy. Suffice it to recall the technological warehouse at the ZIL plant. There were also robots at AvtoVAZ - we recently wrote about the first case of "hacking" of these systems, the first hacker in the USSR was from Tolyatti. But if the cybernetics of the Union achieved their goal, it could be said about it in all seriousness.
What happened to the flight of scientific thought?
I gave birth to you, I will kill you
Later, experts, including Academician Viktor Glushkov, considered Kitov's project almost genius and regretted his sad fate. Indeed, due to such a network, there really was a chance to cope with the notorious lag behind the United States in the production and use of computers. But the irony is different: the military created Soviet cybernetics, and they also put an end to the most ambitious undertaking in its history. Further, the evolution of this industry only slowed down, and by the end of the 60s, the West irrevocably overtook the USSR in the field of digital technologies.
The reason lies in the Soviet system itself, streamlined, two-faced and bureaucratic. In his memoirs, Professor Muzychkin cites such a dialogue between Anatoly Kitov and then not the general, but simply the secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Leonid Brezhnev:
Party officials simply could not allow anyone other than themselves to control the life of the country. That is why automated control was practiced locally - for example, at the same giant factories. But a single bureau that sets tasks for all programmers has never been created, and a common technical standard has not emerged. Although in the US in the 60s, the IBM System / 360 appeared, which marked the beginning of hardware and software compatibility.
Naturally, after the organizational backlog, the technical one came in time. If machines like BESM-6 or MIR-2 even surpassed foreign models in some way, then their element base was yesterday for the Americans. Transistors were first replaced by integrated circuits, and then by very large integrated circuits. By the end of the sixties, the technological gap in the field of computers had already reached 6-7 years. The USSR was no longer able to catch up or overtake the States in the field of cybernetics. The era of victories for Soviet computer scientists turned out to be bright, but short.
And what were the plans! What enthusiasm! We dreamed about artificial intelligence, about communism with machines working instead of people. There was only one thing that the Soviet command did not understand: you cannot get into the bright future by order.
Alexander Bursov