The Soviet Internet: How Not to Network a Nation

Why did the Internet not originate in the Soviet Union? Why, at the height of the Cold War technology race and despite repeated attempts, did leading Soviet scientists fail to develop a nationwide computer network for civilian use contemporary with the US ARPANET and the Chilean Project Cybersyn? This paper sets aside answers such as technological backwardness (disproven by functioning military networks) and censorship cultures to focus on institutional infighting and unregulated competition in the administration of the Soviet knowledge base. The primary case study presented is the case of the cyberneticist Viktor Glushkov and his All-State Automated System (or OGAS, short for obschegosudarstvennaya avtomatizirovannaya sistema). From 1963 until his death at age 59 in 1982, Glushkov publicly fought to develop the OGAS set to manage in real time the information flows coursing throughout the entire Soviet command economy with computer network stretching from Moscow to 10,000s of computer centers in factories. Based on archival evidence and interviews at the Central Economic Mathematical Institute in Moscow and the Institute of Cybernetics in Kiev, among others, this story of Glushkov and his colleagues begins to shed light onto the broader institutional tangle that historian of science Slava Gerovitch has dubbed the Soviet "InterNyet." My concluding remarks will seek to comment on what the aborted Soviet experience in building a networked economy can teach our current situation, especially regarding the institutional conditions for the healthful development of information science, technology, and society.