The automation of scientific research began with the computerization of measurements and data processing. In the early 1960s we processed data from the Atlantic Ocean by remote control, from the research vessel Academic Vernadsky. The availability of the Dnepr control computer with an object communication unit permitted us to automate experiments at the Ukraine Academy of Science before the Americans did. The Americans used the CAMAC system, created in 1967 with improved technical capabilities, while Dnepr's object communication unit was designed in 1961. In 1972, the council on automation of research work was established at the Presidium of the Academy, with Malinovsky as Chairman. As Vice-President of the Academy, I supervised this work, as well as the activity of two other councils: the Computer Technology council headed by Stogny, and the Computer Aided Manufacturing Council headed by Vladimir Sergeevich Mikhailevich.

Computerization of physical science research was closely connected with the automation of testing of complex industrial machinery, which was done for the Navy and for aviation research. When the President of the USSR Academy of Science, Anatoly Petrovich Alexandrov saw our results, he didn't believe them, and we had to show him a system installed on one of our naval vessels. It had 1200 channels of information input.

As the next step, I envision deductive construction algorithm design, where a computer would not only be able to process results, but check hypotheses and build theories based on all available data. This is the future for computerized scientific research.

Generally our research fostered new trends in computer networks and databases. We believe we were the first in the world to propose the idea of networks, as well as transmitting information for computer processing over long distances. Regardless, if we were not the first to discover networks, we were indeed the first to establish distant terminals, when Kiev processed information received from a scientific research vessel in the Atlantic Ocean.

We were the first to complete a draft project of a computer network, the United Government Computer Centers Network. N. Fedorenko and I created this draft between 1962 and 1964, by personal order of Soviet Prime Minister Kosygin. Creating this network allowed us to collect and effectively use economic, scientific-technical and any other information, plus be able to exchange this data, which is critical when transitioning to an information technology-based society.

Personal Reminiscences of Viktor Glushkov. January 8^th 1982

The next research direction emerged slowly, even though it had been conceived long before: this was the theory for an economic control system of many branches of industry, and automated systems for the technical facilities control. Work began in 1962 with the creation of a project plan for the general governmental computer centers, and for computer-assisted, industrial control systems, which commenced in 1963-1964. Then in 1965, we began formulating the Lvov System, for the large-scale serial production of televisions at the Lvov Television Factory. Skurikhin and Morozov had taken up this project, supervising this large-scale initiative at the Institute of Cybernetics and in our SKB of Mathematical Machines and Systems. In 1970, after this system had been successfully implemented, its creators received the Ukrainian Government Prize.

In the summer of 1965, Glushkov went to Lvov to speak at a conference sponsored by the Lvov Sovnarkhoz (government regional supervisory group). In his inspiring lecture, he emphasized the need to begin employing computer-aided enterprise control systems. Director of the Lvov television factory, Stephan Ostapovich Petrovsky, was present at the lecture and proposed that Glushkov create an industrial control system at his factory, promising maximum support. Glushkov lit up after hearing about this opportunity – at that time no such system existed anywhere. Glushkov sent Skurikhin to Lvov with a team of fifteen people. After two years, the system was in place. Skurikhin and his closest assistants lived in Lvov practically the entire time, sometimes working more than 12 hours a day, and rarely taking breaks. Reminiscing about these memorable days, Skurikhin recalled how he spent the New Year's Eve in 1965: "After a very stressful day I did not return to my hotel, but fell asleep at my desk instead. Yes, I slept straight through the New Year's night, into 1966."

Personal Reminiscences of Viktor Glushkov, cont'd. January 8^th 1982

The direction we chose after creating the Lvov System involved establishing a general interchangeable system for machine and instrument construction enterprises. At the end of the 1960s and in the early 1970s, we completed work on the Kuntzev System, which helped us accomplish the majority of the tasks in the instrument and machine construction branches of industry. We were able to sign a decree mandating that the development of 600 systems for nine defense ministries was based on the Kuntzev System. However, the policy of standardization was carried out primarily at the Ministry of Machine Building and to a small degree at the Communications Industry Ministry. Other ministries which had their own systems did not want to be standardized. Nevertheless, even one Machine Building Ministry required more than 50 CAD/CAM systems to be installed at important large-scale factories.

In the beginning of the 1960s, Anatoly Kitov served as Glushkov's deputy in Moscow for the Institute's work with the Soviet defense sectors. He was responsible for the creation of computer-aided control systems for defense installations. Kitov also published the first computer science textbook in the Soviet Union, Digital Computing Machines (Moscow: Soviet Radio, 1956). Kitov was a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, one of its very few young survivors. In 1950, Kitov graduated from the Dzerzhinsky Military Artillery Academy in Moscow with a gold medal. He was sent to the Academy of Artillery Science, where he was assigned to the machine building unit SKB-245 to study electronic computer technology and its possible applications for the Ministry of Defense.

In 1952, Kitov acquired a copy of Cybernetics: Control and Communication in the Animal and Machine (1948), by Norbert Weiner. After reading and discussing it with Alexei Lyapunov, he came to the conclusion that the official Soviet position on cybernetics as being a bourgeois pseudoscience was incorrect. Kitov prepared an article outlining the theory and significance of the new science. For three years the article was discussed at various conferences and seminars. Finally, after many revisions by Lyapunov and Sobolev, it was published as "The Basics of Cybernetics" in August 1955, along with E. Coleman's "What is Cybernetics?" inQuestions of Philosophy.^[3] This presented computers in a positive light and led to further development of cybernetics in the Soviet Union.

In 1954, Kitov was appointed as the director of the Soviet Union's Defense Ministry Computer Center. While working on the computer-aided control in the military sector, he pondered the possibility of computerization and streamlining of the Soviet economy. In January 1959, he sent a letter to Nikita Khrushchev in which he stressed the necessity of developing computer technology. After it was forwarded to Brezhnev, it inspired a flurry of activity. An interdepartmental commission, chaired by Axel I. Berg, prepared a resolution for the Central Committee advocating accelerating the design and production of computers and their incorporation into national economy. The proposal was approved.

In fall 1959, Kitov came up with the idea for a unified computer-aided control system for the military and the national economy. It was based on a network of computer centers, created by and serving the Ministry of Defense. Despite being far behind the United States in mass-producing computers, the high concentration of machines in the powerful Soviet computer centers and their reliable support by military personnel would have allowed us to make more efficient use of them. For several months he worked on substantiating this idea and presented a lengthy report to the Central Committee. A Ministry of Defense commission chaired by Konstantin K. Rokosovsky was created to review this document. The report contained sharp criticism of the Defense Ministry's lack of support for computer development, which made the Soviet government officials view it in a negative light. The bureaucrats at the Central Committee and in the higher echelons of administrative power, especially those at the Defense Ministry, felt that the serious restructuring of computer administration would result in their personal loss of power. They could not allow it. As a result of writing and filing his report, Kitov was thrown out of the Communist Party and fired from his position.

Glushkov knew about Kitov's situation and understood the possible fate of his own chosen path. But it was Glushkov's nature to always look ahead, energetically developing and supporting computer-aided design of complex control systems.

Personal Reminiscences of Viktor Glushkov, cont'd. January 8^th 1982

It turned out that an independent idea generated during the creation of complex systems became the actual model for one such systems with the help of universal languages, SLENG and NEDIS, which we developed specifically for them. The goal was to combine the methods of system optimization with simulation languages and the descriptions of big systems.

A new stage in the development of computer-aided enterprise control systems (CACS) began in the second half of the 1970s. This complex naturally united the goals of computer-aided project design, computer-technology control, automated tests of finished production, and management controls. A CACS complex is now under development at the Ulyanovsk Aviation Factory. Skurikhin supervised this project.

Skurikhin was a worthy partner for Glushkov and his contribution was critical to the creation of computer aided control systems, design systems, and automated production experiments. From 1959 to 1963, Skurikhin actively participated in the creation of the Avangard system at the Sixty-One Communards Shipbuilding Plant in Nikolaev. This was the first computer-aided shipbuilding system in the Ukraine and in the Soviet Union. This system did the so-called plazovy (deck) work – the cutting of the ship's hull from a sheet of steel. Planned initially as a debugging system for program-controlled gas-cutting robots, it evolved into an early prototype of an integrated system for the entire complex ofplazovywork in ship hull design, and in the preparation of the blueprints for their serial manufacture.

The Avangard idea was further implemented in the computer aided design system for submarines from 1968 to 1978: the Chertezh system, – a large-scale manufacturing system that shortened the project design time by a factor of twenty to twenty-five. A larger-scale engineering version of this was established at one of the secret naval design institutes in Leningrad where a powerful, multi-level technical program complex was created.

Personal Reminiscences of Viktor Glushkov. January 9^th 1982

I required all co-workers who went on business trips to Ukraine to visit colleges and either give lectures or do consulting work so they would become familiar with the students and attract the more capable ones to work at our institute. We did this type of work even with school children. The institute would sponsor the schools where programming was taught in the higher grades. They arranged competitions and academic Olympics at our institute; the staff also helped organize the Academy for Gifted Children in the Crimea, where young students could go in the summer to listen to the lectures given by the best computer specialists from Kiev, Moscow, and Novosibirsk.

Scientists at the institute – in the beginning I was alone, then others began to help – lectured at the House of Scientific Technological Propaganda that requalified engineers and technicians from Kiev. We developed curricula for colleges, and naturally, post-graduate programs, since the computer science field was so new. We also trained technical computer operators, even though many other places didn't. This sub-specialty was introduced at one of the technical schools in Kiev. As a result, a solid base was being created in Ukraine to prepare the necessary staff for the development of computer and cybernetic systems.

For higher education – Doctors and Candidates of Science – the emphasis remained on educating and promoting Doctors of Science because the institute needed to have enough trained staff to direct and advise postgraduate students and to make up the nucleus for the future scientific counsel who would handle the defense of dissertations. Ten years after the Institute was founded, it had sixty Doctors of Science and nearly five hundred Candidates of Science on its staff. Many of Doctors of Science had been trained to work for other colleges and new organizations.

The highly qualified teams of specialists in informatics, computer technology and cybernetics who had been trained at higher institutions and specialized academies, worked in many scientific research organizations and enterprises throughout Ukraine. This was part of Glushkov's legacy – working for Ukraine's future.

Glushkov was very close to his students and colleagues and treated them as dear friends. "Whenever we got together with friends or co-workers, he always became the soul of the group," remembered Glushkov's wife Valentina:

A brilliant sense of humor made him particularly attractive. He loved to sing, especially the Ukrainian folk songs "I Wonder at the Sky," "Two Colors," "The Wide Dnepr is Roaring and Groaning," and others. He could recite poetry verses by heart for hours. The only thing that he never learned how to do was dance. For some reason, he was very shy about it.

His favorite and singular pastime was fishing on the Dnepr. At the resort, the very next day, he would find a pad and a pen, and go to work. Cadres of men, students, and young scientists – those who believed and went with him into a new field of computer technology, were always tramping off to go fishing on the Dnepr with him. Wives rarely came to visit. They always exchanged tons of jokes, fishing tales, anecdotes, and funny stories there. The songs carried far along the Dnepr.

He was never happy to be alone. If he was reading and found out something interesting, he would have to immediately share it with someone. He read classical literature constantly, regardless of how busy he was. He believed that without it, he could never have achieved what he had been able to achieve in science, especially in mathematics. He felt that reading classical literature taught a person to dream, to develop the kind of imagination that was necessary to be a good mathematician. He tried to spend time with our children – with our daughters Olga and Vera, especially when they began to grow and develop personalities. It's too bad that he wasn't more hands-on with their upbringing, but he often gave good advice. At times, it seemed to me that he was too harsh with the children. He constantly said that we should not spoil them; instead they must learn to overcome difficulties starting from childhood. We can support them during that time, but within reason. He always said that a person must always have a goal, a dream, an objective toward which they must strive and conquer obstacles along the way; only after realizing it, would a person experience real joy and satisfaction.

Personal Reminiscences of Viktor Glushkov. January 10^th and 11^th 1982

First Deputy Prime Minister Kosygin instructed me to begin work on a computerized control system for the economy in November 1962, because I had already expressed these ideas to the President of the Soviet Academy of Science, Mstislav Keldysh, who brought me to see him. I briefly outlined for Kosygin what we wanted to do; he approved; the Council of Ministers of the USSR issued an order for the creation of a special commission (with me as its chairman) to prepare materials for a government resolution. On this commission were economists, notably Academician N.N. Federenko, chief of the Central Statistical Department Vadim Nikitovich Starovsky, First Deputy Minister of Communications A.I. Sergeichuk, and people from other administrative bodies.

The commission was granted many privileges. This allowed me to visit any cabinet, minister, or even the Chairman of Gosplan [in Russian: Gosudarstvennii planovii komitet,the state economic planning agency], and ask questions or simply sit in a corner and watch him make decisions and procedures. Naturally, I received permission to familiarize myself, as needed, with any production site, enterprise, organization, etc.

By that time we already had a concept for a unified system of computing centers for economic information processing for the entire country. The famous economist Vasily Sergeevich Nemchinov and his students proposed using computers already operating in computer centers, but not in a remote access mode. Neither the economists, nor the computer technology specialists were aware of it at the time. They basically copied the 1955 proposal by the USSR Academy of Science to create a system of academic computing centers for scientific calculations, which led to the creation of the Computer Center at the Ukraine's Academy of Science. They proposed to do exactly the same thing for the economy: to create large government computing centers in Moscow, Kiev, Novosibirsk, Riga, Kharkov, and other cities. Workers from various economic institutions would bring their problems to these centers, make their computations, receive their results, and leave. Of course, this was not acceptable to me, because by that time we were already manipulating data remotely and were able to send, receive and process the data from the Atlantic Ocean at Kiev's computing center.

All of the governmental organizations in our nations were poorly prepared to process economic data. The blame could be placed on both the economists, who never computed anything, as well as on the computer designers. As a result, the statistics and planning agencies were still equipped with 1939-vintage mechanical calculating machines at the time when America had completely switched over to the electronic digital computers.

By 1965, the Americans were working on two lines: scientific high-capacity binary floating-point machines and business-oriented sequential binary-decimal devices with advanced memory. The IBM Corporation was the first company to produce these two lines of machines simultaneously. At this time, we only had scientific computers, and no one was developing machines for economic purposes. Therefore, the first thing I tried to do was stimulate interest in developing machines for economic applications, which were sorely needed. I turned to the best computer designers, mainly Bashir I. Rameev, the designer of the Ural-1 and Ural-2 computers, and Victor V. Przhyakovsky, the designer of the Minsk series, and urged them to start working on this problem.

I formed a working group at the Institute and single-handedly came up with a program to outline the task assigned by Kosygin. I spent a week at the Central Statistical Department studying every detail of their work; I examined all the links between them and the regional stations. I spent a lot of time at Gosplan, whose office staff was very helpful, especially Vasily Mikhailovich Ryabikov, Gosplan's First Deputy Minister. Both of them had extensive experience in the military economics and of course, intimately knew Gosplan. With their help, I was able to study all the tasks and planning steps, and anticipate the difficulties that might emerge.

In 1963, I visited at least one hundred various sites, from factories and mines to state collective farms. Over the next ten years, the number of sites had increased to almost a thousand. Therefore, I knew more than anyone else about every detail of the national economy and understood the peculiarities of the existing management system, which allowed me to predict the difficulties that might arise and what calculations would be necessary.

I quickly understood technological needs as well. Long before I was fully aware of the scope of the project, I had envisioned not individual government centers, but an entire network of computing centers with remote access capability. In other words, I expanded the concept of shared data processing to include contemporary technological methods. The first draft of the project for the Unified State Network of Computing Centers included nearly one hundred centers in large industrial cities, connected via wide-band communication channels. These centers, spread throughout the country, would be united with smaller regional centers to process economic information. We estimated there would be twenty thousand of these, composed of large enterprises, ministries, and key centers that served the small enterprises. An important characteristic of the system was its data bank and the ability to access it remotely from anywhere in the network after an automatic identity check. We worked out a number of information protection issues as well. In addition, in this two-level system the main computing centers exchanged information with each other not by channel, but through messages, which is now standard. I suggested combining these one to two hundred centers with wide-band channels to bypass channel-forming apparatus, so it would be possible to copy the information from a magnetic tape in Vladivostok directly onto a tape in Moscow without a reduction in speed. All of the procedures would be greatly simplified and the network would gain additional capabilities. Nothing like this existed back then and until 1977 our project was a secret.

In addition to the network's structure, I developed a system of mathematical models to manage the economy, in order to receive a regular flow of information. Consequently, I presented our plan to Keldysh, who approved it except for the electronic currency system. The model would still work without it. According to Keldysh, such a system would only stir up controversy and should be treated as a separate issue from the economic plan. I agreed with him and we did not introduce this factor into the project. I did write a separate letter about it to the Central Committee; it came up for discussion several times but eventually disappeared, and no resolution concerning the creation of electronic currency system was made. Once we finished the final draft of the project, we submitted it for review by the commission.

Personal Reminiscences of Viktor Glushkov. cont'd, January 10^th and 11^th, 1982

Unfortunately, after the commission reviewed the project proposal, they dismissed most of it. The entire economic portion was removed, and only plans for the network itself remained. The removed portion of the economic proposal was burned because it was top secret and dangerous to the Soviet bureaucracy. We were not even allowed to keep a copy of it at the Institute, and unfortunately, we are unable to recreate it. The head of the Central Statistical Department, Starovsky, was one of the staunch opponents of the project. His criticisms were purely demagogical. We proposed a new system of accounting, which would allow access to any piece of information from any point. Starovsky argued that the Central Statistical Department had been organized on Lenin's initiative, and so far was managing its assigned tasks quite well. He was somehow able to convince Kosygin that the information from the Central Statistical Department was sufficient for state control, and there was no need for a new system.

In June 1964 we presented our project to the government for approval, and in November, I made a presentation about it at a session of the Presidium of the Council of Ministers. Naturally, I mentioned the Central Statistical Department's objections. That's when a decision was made to give the project to the Central Statistical Department for reworking, with the assistance of the Radio Industry Ministry. For two years, we worked from the bottom up; not from the ideas of what was best for future of the country, but from what already existed. The regional offices of the Central Statistical Department in the Archangelsk region and the city of Nukus in the Karakalpaksky Autonomous Republic (two of the most distant points from Moscow) were assigned to study the information flow. They were supposed to determine how many documents, statistical reports, and letters were received in these regional offices from enterprises, organizations, etc.

According to the Central Statistical Department, when arithmometers were used to process information, each input digit or letter required 50 sorting or arithmetic operations. Feeling smug, the authors of this project reported that if they were to use electronic digital computers, the number of operations would increase tenfold. God only knows why they wrote this. Furthermore, they took the number of statistical reports being processed, multiplied it by 500 and came up with the required operating speed. The number was ridiculous: if the computers were installed in Archangelsk and Nukus, they would have to perform at 2000 operations per second! This was the conclusion that they presented to the government.

Another commission was created to accept this project. They wanted me to chair it, but I refused on ethical grounds. After the commission members reviewed the project, they declared that although they did not agree with all of my ideas, at least my proposal had a planning phase, whereas the Central Statistical Department had only statistics. Except for me, the commission unanimously rejected the project. Considering the vital importance of this project for our country, I suggested to mark the project as unsatisfactory, but move onto the technical development phase to be carried out by the Ministry of Radio Production, the Academy of Science of the Soviet Union, and Gosplan. My proposal was rejected again, but my recommendation was recorded as a special opinion and Gosplan was ordered to start over.

Gosplan required two years to do this, and it was already 1966. They dragged their feet until 1968, and accomplished absolutely nothing. Moreover, instead of preparing the project outline, they wrote a decree for the USSR Council of Ministers, restoring the old system of branch control. As the result, they were absolved of any responsibility for the project. If every ministry created its own branch system, they would merge at the end and function as one comprehensive governmental system. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief, nothing more needed to be done and so it was ordered. The resulting OGAS became a sbornaya solyanka – a hodge-podge soup of mismatched bits.

Valentina Glushkova recalled that more than once after returning from Moscow, her husband would say, "It's terribly depressing that nothing ever needs to change." Glushkov used to keep a note under the glass top of his desk during those years:

100 times I've sworn this oath:
100 years I'd rather languish in a dungeon,
100 mountains I'd rather grind to dust,
If only I don't have to make a fool to see the truth.

– Bakhvalan Machmud

But the problem was not with the "fools," it was a deliberate denigration of Glushkov's ideas.

Personal Reminiscences of Viktor Glushkov, cont'd. January 10^th and 11^th 1982

Starting in 1964, when my project was first announced, many people began to openly oppose me, among them the economists Lieberman, Belkin, Birman, and others; many of them later left for the United States and Israel. Kosygin, who had always been a very practical man, became interested in the projected cost of our project. In the preliminary budget, it was estimated at 20 billion rubles. The main part could be done in three five-year periods, but only if it were organized and funded like the nuclear and space programs. I did not hide from Kosygin that this program was far more complicated than the space and nuclear programs combined. Plus, it would be much more difficult to coordinate, because it involved industry, commerce, planning agencies, administration, and control. The working model anticipated that after the first investment of 5 billion rubles during the first five-year period, the return would be in excess five billion rubles, because we planed for the program to pay for itself. And after three such five-year periods, the program would bring no less than 100 billion rubles in revenue – and this was a conservative figure.

But the "ivory tower" economists convinced Kosygin that the economic reform would cost nothing, except for the price of paper to print the Council of Ministers' decree, therefore bringing more revenue in the end. Our ideas were shoved aside once more and moreover, we was treated with suspicion; Kosygin was not happy.

In many of his scientific articles and monographs, Glushkov proposed and worked out ideas for enhancing the government's administrative system. These included regulating production and social processes, technology for establishing standards, a technical basis for coordinating production programs on a country-wide scale, implementing a more equitable distribution system, creating a system which would prevent graft and money-laundering, and the introduction of an electronic currency system. Many of these ideas, which in Glushkov's day seemed too revolutionary, have been realized today.

Personal Reminiscences of Viktor Glushkov cont'd. January 10^th and 11^th 1982

By the end of the 1960s, both the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union had received information that the Americans had completed a plan to build several information networks – two years later than us. The difference was that the American government did not argue over this and carried it out, and planned to make ARPANET and several others operational in 1969, connecting computers in different American cities. That is when our government began to worry. I sent a note to Kirilenko about the necessity of returning to my project ideas. ‘Tell me what you think we need to do and we'll create a commission,' he replied. I answered along these lines: ‘I implore you not to create a commission because it always gets in the way of progress and ruins every project.' But a commission was created anyway; Vladimir Alexeevich Kirillin was appointed as the chairman and I was his deputy.

This commission consisted of higher level officials than before, including a minister of finance, minister of instrument building, and others. It had to prepare a resolution for the creation of OGAS to be reviewed by the Politburo, which would then decide if it was a go or not. So, the work began again. This time, I focused not so much on the essence of the project, since that was already done, but on the actual steps for the realization of OGAS.

The reality was that people like Korolev and Kurchatov had their own representative, who was a member of the Politburo, and they could go to him to immediately resolve any problems. Unfortunately, we had no such person to turn to. Issues related to computerization were the most complex and controversial ones, able to greatly affected politics, and any mistake would have had dire consequences. We badly needed a benefactor in the Politburo because our problem was political first and scientific-technological second. We planed to create a state committee on modernization of government administration (in Russian: Gosudarstvennii Komitet po Sovershenstvovaniu Upravleniya, or Goskomupr). Its scientific center would contain ten to fifteen institutes, which already existed; therefore, we only needed to create one leading institute for control and dealing with the Politburo. The rest would be selected from various Academies of Science.

Everything went smoothly and everyone agreed. By this time, a draft directive of the 26th Communist Party Congress was published, which included all of our formulations. Our proposal was reviewed by the Politburo twice. At one of the sessions they reviewed the overall project and agreed that OGAS had to be implemented. But how? By creating Goskomupr, or was it necessary to create something else? This is where the arguments began. I succeeded in "convincing" all the members of the commission, except the Minister of Finance Garbuzov, and then we presented them again to the Politburo.

But when we came to the session – incidentally, it took place in Stalin's former office – Kirillin whispered to me, ‘Something's happened, but I don't know exactly what.' The question was reviewed at the session with neither the General Secretary nor the Prime Minister: Brezhnev had left for Baku to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Soviet leadership in Azerbaijan, and Kosygin was in Egypt at Abdul Nasser's funeral. Mikhail Suslov conducted the session. Kirillin spoke first, then me. There were many questions and I answered all of them. When Garbuzov came up to the podium and responded, his speech sounded like a joke. He addressed Mazurov, Kosygin's First Deputy Minister, ‘Kyrill Trofimovich, I went to Minsk to observed poultry farms, as ordered. And there, on this one particular poultry farm, the poultry maids were using a computer.'

I laughed out loud. He shook his finger at me and warned: ‘Don't laugh Glushkov, we are discussing serious matters here.' But Suslov interrupted him, ‘Comrade Garbuzov, you are not the chairman yet, and it's not your business to bring a session of the Politburo to order.' Then, Garbuzov – the self-assured and conceited person that he was – continued as if nothing had happened, ‘The computer executes three programs: it turns the music on when the hen lays an egg, it turns a light on and off and on and so forth. This program has significantly improved the egg production on this farm.' At this point he declared that now all poultry farms in the Soviet Union need to be automated and only then could we begin to think about such stupid things as the general governmental system. I laughed again and thought: ‘All right, whatever.'

A counterproposal was issued, which simplified everything: Goskomupr was reduced to a department within the existing State Committee on Science and Technology and the whole system became more technical, that is, the focus was changed from the control of industrial and management processes to a government network of computing centers. Anything related to economic or mathematical models for OGAS was scrapped. It became a hardware solution without any appropriate software support.

Just before the end of the session, Suslov stood up and said, ‘Comrades, perhaps we are making a mistake by not accepting this project as a whole, but because it calls for such a revolutionary transformation, it will be difficult to realize at this time. So let's go ahead with the counterproposal for now, and then we will see what's what.' He then turned not to Kirillin, but to me, and asked, ‘What do you think?' I replied, ‘Mikhail Andreevich, I will only say one thing: if we do not do this correctly right now, then during the second half of the 1970s the Soviet economy will encounter such problems that we will be forced to return to this question.' But in the end, my opinion did not matter, and they accepted the counterproposal.

Sometime in November, Kirilenko asked me to come to his office at the Old Square. When I entered his reception area at 9:58 am, I saw our ‘Rocket Minister,' Sergei Alexandrovich Afanasiev, who had a scheduled appointment with Kirilenko at 10:10 am. He asked me, ‘Is yours supposed to be a short meeting?' I responded that I had no idea why I was there.

I went in first. Andrei Pavlovich stood up, greeted me, and said, ‘You have been appointed Kirillin's First Deputy. I have already confirmed this with Leonid Ilyich (Brezhnev), who asked me if he needed to have a little chat with you, but I told him no, I will take care of everything myself.'

I replied, ‘Andrei Pavlovich, why didn't you discuss this with me first? What if I won't agree? You know that I was against the accepted proposal because it will only disfigure OGAS and yield no positive results. If I were to agree with your proposal now, then both of us would look guilty: I brought you a proposal, you supported it, they appointed me and put everything in my hands, but nothing gets done. You are a smart man, you understand that from this position, it's impossible to make even a simple rocket, never mind a new economic system of government administration.'

We sat down, and he started to pressure me, ‘You've put me in an uncomfortable position with Leonid Ilyich. I've already told him that everything was arranged.' But I would not budge. He began using some ugly word to force me to agree, but to no avail. His tone alternated between nasty and polite for an hour. Then, just like that, he let me go. In the end, we had not agreed on anything. He didn't even say good-bye to me, and I didn't speak to him again until we met at the 24th Party Congress. Later, our relationship improved. He ended up recommending his friend, Dmitri Zhimerin, as Kirillin's deputy, and I agreed to be the scientific supervisor of the head institute.

Meanwhile, the Western press was in an uproar. At first, no one knew about our proposals because they were secret. The first mention of OGAS appeared in the proceedings of the 24th Communist Party Congress.

The first ones to get upset were the Americans. Of course, they would not have started a war with us – it was only a ruse. They were using the arms race to crush our economy, which was already weak. Any news about even a possibility of strengthening our economy frightened them, so they immediately opened fire on me with every weapon at their disposal. Two pieces appeared: one was in The Washington Post, entitled ‘Punch Cards Control the Kremlin,' by Viktor Zorza, who wrote that, ‘The Tsar of Soviet Cybernetics, Academic V.M. Glushkov Proposes to Change the Kremlin Leadership with Computers.' It was a nasty article.

The second article, in Britain's The Guardian, was aimed at the Soviet intelligencia. It stated that Academic Glushkov proposed to create a network of computing centers with data banks; while it sounded very modern and was more advanced than anything currently available in the West, its real purpose was not economic, but actually a part of a KGB plot, intended to gather Soviet citizens' thoughts in order to keep track of them. This second article was republished many times all over the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc countries.

At the same time, all of my opponents in the Soviet Union, particularly the economists, began sneering at me. In 1972 Izvestia published an article by Boris Milner, Deputy Director for the Institute of the United States and Canada, titled, ‘The USA: Lessons of the Electronic Boom.'^[4] In it, he attempted to prove that the demand for computers in the United States had dropped. Several economists, who had taken business trips to the United States, sent reports to the Central Committee comparing computer technology to a passing fad, sort of like abstract painting. It was rumored that the capitalists bought the new machines because it was trendy and they did not want to appear old-fashioned.

This completely disoriented our leaders. It also negatively impacted the decision about our proposal. Garbuzov actually told Kosygin that the Central Committee would use Goskomupr to monitor the economic decisions made by him (Kosygin) and the Council of Ministers. This turned Kosygin against us and assured that the Goskomupr proposal would not be accepted. But I didn't learn about that until two years later.

In 1972, Kirilenko supervised a national conference on computerization, with an emphasis on the control of industrial processes. He intended to slow down the work on the Automatic Control Management Systems and speed up the work on Automatic Control of Technological Processes.

In my opinion, the Central Committee was somehow influenced by the CIA and their clever disinformation campaign, intended to hinder attempts to improve our economy. Perhaps they figured that such a diversion was the simplest and cheapest way of winning the economic competition. I was able to do some things to counteract this. I asked our science advisor attaché in Washington to prepare a report on the actual usage of computers in the United States, which former ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin sent to the Central Committee. Because this report originated directly from our ambassador in the United States, every member of the Politburo received it and read it. This maneuver seemed to work, and it softened the blow a bit.

During the preparations for the 25th Congress of the Communist Party, attempts were made to completely eliminate the word ‘OGAS' from the project resolution. After the draft of the ‘Basic Directions' had been published, I wrote a note to the Central Committee, proposing to create several branch systems of computerized administration and later unite them under OGAS. It was accepted.

The same thing happened five years later, during the preparations for the 26th Congress. But this time, we were better prepared: we sent materials to the commission that wrote Brezhnev's speech. I spoke with almost all of its members and swayed them in our favor; they promised to push our proposals through. Initially, we wanted the proposal to be included in Brezhnev's speech at the 1980 October Plenum of the Central Committee. But it was too long and much of the information was withheld. We were able to include a large portion of the proposal in the review report on computer technology.

I was advised to publicize the OGAS program in Pravda. The editor of the paper, a former administrator, backed me. They named my article ‘For the Whole Country,' which was hardly accidental, because Pravda was the media wing of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and no article could have appeared there without approval.^[5]

Glushkov's daughter, Olga, recorded the OGAS story on January 10 and 11, 1982. After Pravdapublished Glushkov's article, he hoped that OGAS would finally be realized for the whole country. Perhaps this inspired the ailing Glushkov to be able to dictate his last words. On that very day, Defense Minister Ustinov's assistant visited Glushkov in the hospital's intensive care unit and asked, "Can the minister be of any help?" Glushkov, who had just finished dictating his story of trials and tribulations could not help but remember the wall of impenetrable bureaucracy and misunderstanding that he encountered with OGAS.

"Ask him for a tank!!" Glushkov answered angrily, surrounded by life support equipment, which was barely keeping him alive. His mind was as clear as ever, but his ability to endure the soul-wrenching, physical pain was coming to an end.

History confirmed Glushkov's prediction, and by the end of the 1970s the Soviet economy was facing enormous problems. Until the end of his life Glushkov remained true to the creation of OGAS, which might have saved the ailing economy. Perhaps he was a hopeless dreamer? Or a romantic scientist? History will have the last word.

Glushkov's story about the struggle to create OGAS is an indictment of the Soviet government for not fully utilizing its own powerful scientific talent. The same was true not just for Glushkov but for many other scientists. There is no doubt that this is one of the most important reasons why the Soviet Union – a great nation – stumbled on its way to the 21st century, depriving millions of people of confidence in tomorrow's world, in the future dignity of their children, and the belief that their lives were not in vain.

Glushkov was undoubtedly right, setting forward a plan for computerizing Soviet Union. But under such conditions, he could do nothing without a high-level resolution from the government and the Central Committee of the Communist Party, which had become a barrier on his path. Glushkov was ahead of his time. The government and society were not prepared to comprehend OGAS. They completely misunderstood his intentions, which for him were so noble and obvious, and it became his tragedy.

On the morning of January 30, 1982, Glushkov passed away.

According to a resolution of the Ukrainian government, the Institute of Cybernetics was renamed after its creator.

^[3] A.A. Lyapunov and S.L. Sobolev, "The Basics of Cybernetics," 48-53, and E. Coleman's "What is Cybernetics?" 113-118, both in Questions of Philosophy (No 8, 1955).

^[4] Izvestia, March 18, 1972, 4.

^[5] December 13, 1981 by V. Glushkov and Y. Kanigin.