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Home CCSU Theses & Dissertations Soviet Union and computing : a system failure : the cybernetic critique of Soviet history

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Soviet Union and computing : a system failure : the cybernetic critique of Soviet history

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Identifier	Thesis 1729
Author	Karaiosfoglou, Ioannis
Title	Soviet Union and computing : a system failure : the cybernetic critique of Soviet history
Publisher	Central Connecticut State University
Date	2003
Resource Type	Master's Thesis
Notes	It is widely accepted that the technological and scientific phenomenon that came to be known as “Computing” contributed immensely in the development of the post-World War II industrial societies - to the extent that, today, the technological status of a modern society is frequently equated with the sophistication of its cybernetic infrastructure. In this light it is very surprising that the connection between the explosive growth of the twin fields of Information Technology and Information Science in the post-WWII Western societies andthe equally swift implosion of the essentially non-computerized Soviet World has not been made either as often or as explicitly as one would expect. This thesis attempts to provide a cohesive narrative that aims to place cybernetics in the context of Soviet history, and Soviet history in the context of cybernetics. It is argued that the failure of Soviet society to assimilate computing has much wider implications than it may appear at first, because, from a certain viewpoint, the Soviet experiment can be understood as a fervent - but failed - attempt for the realization of some of the same philosophical impulses that spawned computing itself. Accordingly, the history of the interaction between Soviet society and computing can offer important insights in the merits and faults of both, the theory that motivated Soviet society - Historical Materialism - and the corpus of ideas that inspired computing - cybernetics. Even more important, an examination of Soviet history from a cybernetic perspective can contribute sorely needed clarity to some of the more perplexing - for the traditional analysis - aspects of Soviet history. The central argument of the thesis is founded on a simple observation: Historical Materialism predicts that industrial societies must follow a linear - albeit uneven and possibly violent- evolution towards Communism. Accordingly, a society constructed to fulfill this prediction should exhibit a regular social and political behavior aimed at such a goal. In the actual conditions of the Soviet system, though, Soviet society exhibited an increasingly more pronounced social and political oscillation, which was evidenced by the introduction of contradictory state policies, and which culminated in the dissolution of the Soviet system. In contrast to Historical Materialism, cybernetic theory provides a very satisfactory explanation for this effect: A cybernetic analysis of the Soviet system shows that it was constructed with a specific aim - to facilitate the passage of Soviet society to Communism -and that the policies that the Soviet regime adopted were constantly modified according to the estimations of the proximity of its fixed aim. The stability of such a prediction-based system depends largely on the efficacy of its feedback processes. Because of the ideocratic founding of the Soviet system such processes were ineffective, nonexistent, or actively suppressed - a situation that introduced to the Soviet system a systematic instability, which induced the catastrophic oscillation it underwent. The obvious possibilities that computing presented for strengthening the feedback mechanisms of the Soviet system did not escape the attention of members of the Soviet scientific community. Some Soviet cyberneticians believed that a thorough computerization of Soviet economy could prove a viable alternative for the missing price and democratic systems. Others envisioned an even more radical possibility - the substitution of the official ideology with something approaching a Universal Cybernetic Materialism. Such aspirations, though, were thwarted by Soviet reality. Even when the official position towards Computing was not hostile, the active opposition of parts of Soviet society to the various computerization schemes undermined all such efforts. The true explanation for the inability of the Soviet system to assimilate what in many ways could be its only hope, was provided by the dissident movement of the 1960’s and 1970’s - and, specifically, by Alexander Yessenin-Volpin’s Legality Program. The Program was clearly motivated by the cybernetic paradigm, and the idea of the State-as-Computer. It was the understanding of the State as a logical - i.e. cybernetic - machine that inspired the vocal demand that Soviet citizens be awarded the rights guaranteed to them by the Soviet Constitution. The subsequent denial of the Soviet regime to obey its own laws signified that the Soviet system contained a fatal logical discrepancy and proved definitively the theoretical failure of its founding assumptions. In turn, it was largely this realization that convinced large parts of the Soviet elite to desert the regime in the late 1980’s and to opt for an alternative social paradigm - a western-style democracy. For History as a science, the obvious ability of cybernetics to explain many of the problems that the Soviet phenomenon presents, offers the interesting possibility that cybernetic theories may yield solutions to other comparable problems.
Subject	Computers -- Soviet Union Computer industry -- Soviet Union
Department	Department of History
Advisor	Bergman, Jay
Type	Text
Digital Format	application/pdf
Language	eng
OCLC number	713734052
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Soviet Union and computing : a system failure : the cybernetic critique of Soviet history

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