Memories, according to the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky, are a person's most precious possessions. The more pivotal they are – the most tragic ones or the ones requiring tremendous strength and stamina – the more dear they seem. This is why Glushkov, in the last nine days of his life, dictated his last testament to his daughter. For this same reason Rameev, Akushsky, Brusentsov, and other Soviet computer pioneers readily shared their memories with me. My life presented me with a series of challenges as well, as if it trying to prove the truth of Dostoevsky's great words.

In 1939, I enrolled at the Leningrad Mining Institute. Like the rest of my friends and peers, I dreamt of getting a higher education, which was considered at that time to be more important than material possessions. But I was soon drafted into the Army and had to put my educational goals aside.^[8] Two years later, just as I was awaiting demobilization and hoped to return to the institute, the Great Patriotic War started and the young draftees were at the forefront of battle – soldiers, sergeants, and lieutenants. They were the closest ones to the enemy and suffered the largest irreplaceable losses. I am one of the lucky ones who survived, but my older brother – a tanker – was among the thousands who now rest in countless common graves beneath the former fields of battle. I still have his Orders of the Great Patriotic War of the 1st and 2nd degree that were removed from his combat uniform, along with some of his photos and letters from the front.

I am sure that the readers, who have attentively studied the previous chapters of this book, have noticed that nearly every one of my computing colleagues participated in the war. By describing the first postwar decades in the Soviet Union, this book also documents the lives of the people who were touched by the war.

My own experience was certainly neither the most difficult nor most tragic part of the war. But for me, it is the most poignant, the one that will always remain in my memory, the one that left scars on my body and soul.

Fifty years of the post-war life have placed other pages in my memory: studying, family, and the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, where my path continued from post-graduate student to Corresponding Member. During the 1950s and 1960s I worked very hard, sparing neither time nor health, but receiving enormous satisfaction from the results of my work. It was during those years that I developed Dnepr, the Ukraine's first mass-produced semiconductor control computer. Later I worked on designing numerous automation systems for technological processes and complex scientific experiments.

The 1970s passed more peacefully, but I continued to work hard. The experience and authority gained over the years by the teams at the Glushkov Institute helped immensely. The 1980s and 1990s were disappointing: the amount of energy I put into my work during this period could have produced more significant results. Many obstacles stood in the way of scientific research, especially in applying the results for industrial purposes. By contrast, the early years were successful, though not simple. The growth and initial development of digital electronic computing technology in the Soviet Union and the biographies of its remarkable creators have to become an integral part of the history of computing.

In 1988, when I found myself in the hospital after a heart attack, I tried to write about myself and my most important professional accomplishments in the postwar years. Much of it turned out to be a diary of sorts, in which I noted the state of my health, my ideas, and wrote down what I could remember about my path in science, including the period spanning the Dnepr's creation and implementation.

I decided to include that last portion of my diary in this book, partly as an addition to Glushkov's last testament, where he talks about the heroic period of the growth of the Institute of Cybernetics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. The technical part of my diary begins here:

November 21, 1998

Today is November 21, 1988, my last day at the hospital. It has been 2 months and 18 days since my heart attack on September 3rd. Tomorrow, I will be taken to the ‘Zhovten' sanitarium near Kiev to begin my rehabilitation.

November 21 is a memorable date for me: 47 years ago, I was wounded on the bank of the Volga River near Kalinin. A piece of shrapnel tore through the front of my right shoulder, just missing the carotid artery, and exited, breaking my right shoulder blade. ‘You are a very lucky young man,' the doctor in the regiment hospital told me, ‘A little further over and your carotid artery would have been severed. They would not have gotten you here alive.'

When my heart attack occurred a few months ago, the physicians were not sure that I would recover. If I had gone out to my dacha on the morning of September 3 – which I was ready to do despite not feeling well – then I probably would not be alive today.

During the period I have described in this book, I was very enthusiastic and highly driven to accomplish something significant in science, but not for the sake of personal gain or additional accolades – I thought nothing of that. I remember the end of the summer in 1956, when Boris Gnedenko, director of the Ukrainian Academy's Mathematics Institute, which included our laboratory, phoned me:

"Come to my apartment. I want you to meet the new lab manager!"

He sent a car to pick me up and I was quickly transported from Feofania to Kiev.

In Gnedenko's office sat a young man wearing glasses. Gnedenko introduced us – I was a communist party organizer in our lab back then – and asked me to take a ride out to Feofania with the new lab manager – mathematician and Doctor of Physical Mathematical Science, Viktor Glushkov. Gnedenko himself was obviously busy.

Glushkov and I arrived at the lab during the lunch break. Knowing the lab would be empty, I led him out to the sports field where workers were playing an enthusiastic volleyball game. We stood and watched for a while. I sensed that Viktor felt a little uneasy, so I introduced him to some of the people.

Almost immediately after his arrival at the lab, our scientific seminars got a big push. At that time, cybernetics was just beginning to gain acceptance in our country but not by many. In print, it was frequently referred to as pseudo-science, which attempted to substitute machines for human brains. Back then, Wiener's remarkable books were unheard of in the Soviet Union. And when the first one arrived, it was kept at the Moscow SKB-245 in the department of secret documents!

November 26, 1988

Forty seven years ago today, I arrived in Moscow at the Timiryazev Agricultural Academy, which housed a military hospital at that time. After a brief medical examination and a change of my wound dressing, they put me in a tiny room on the eighth floor. I had an empty cot next to me where another Red Army soldier was soon placed. After the attendants left, the soldier sat up in bed and began checking himself for lice. As he squashed the odious parasites between his fingernails, his would frequently grimace and occasionally mumble unintelligibly. He was older, unshaven, his hair a mess: it was obvious that he had just come from the trenches. Back then I was still unaware of how much a human can suffer from lice. But later, on the Northwest front, where lice were eating us alive all summer long, I often thought of that soldier.

Our makeshift room was on the top floor of the hospital and the attendants accidentally forgot about us. They finally came back on the second or third day, fed us, then led us out to a truck. From there we were put on a train that transported the wounded soldiers to Tyumen, in Siberia.

Going back to my first meeting with Glushkov:

Glushkov's arrival changed the character to our lab and set a new tone for the way our communist party group operated. We decided to write a letter to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine. In this letter we pointed out that the work in the field of computer technology in the Soviet Union, and especially in Ukraine, was developing much slower than in the United States, United Kingdom, and France. Moreover, our first computers were still in the embryonic stage. We concluded, "The condition of computer technology in Ukraine borders on being a crime against the state!" It was true.

Every member of the communist party-group at the laboratory signed the letter. Glushkov supported our position, but said that since he was not a communist, he could not sign it.

We could have never anticipated the response that our letter generated: many copies were made and sent to all members of the Ukrainian Politburo; a meeting of the Politburo was quickly organized and Glushkov was invited to attend. A number of important decisions were made at that meeting including reorganizing the laboratory into the Computer Center at the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and erecting buildings to house the center itself and to provide living quarters for its engineers. Glushkov was appointed as the director of the center and he recommended me as the Deputy Director for Scientific Affairs.

After one of our visits to the Central Committee's Department of Science, as Glushkov and I were leaving the building, he suddenly asked me:

"Boris Nikolayevich, could you recommend me for membership in the Party?"

"Of course," I said; I was glad to do it. In the letter of recommendation, I wrote everything I knew about Viktor Mikhailovich: he was talented, modest, had quickly earned the respect of the team, he worked extremely hard, and was able to infuse the team with new creative energy in a very short time.

Once, when Glushkov and I met in the corridor of the Computer Center, he said, "We should design universal control computers. Now everybody is interested in specialization. But since designing a computer requires a lot of time, it could be obsolete as soon as it's created. Besides, it's practically impossible to change the design of a specialized computer. Original technology should always be universal, and then it can be specialized."

A few days later he met me again and asked:

"Have you started the work yet? If you don't like my proposal, I can talk to somebody else."

I said that I liked his proposal and was thinking about how to start such a project. By 1958 I had gained considerable experience in semiconductor computing devices and control computers. In 1957-1958, under my management, a secret project for a control computer for aircraft-bombers was developed in Kiev. The mathematical part of the work was done by a young Doctor of Technical Sciences Shamansky, a very qualified, intelligent and responsible man. The following areas required specialization: the navigational tasks that had to be solved in-flight aboard the bombers, on-board radar equipment, and issues with aiming of the aircraft's missiles. I can now write about this in the open because more than forty years have passed and the information is no longer secret.

We finished the work on time, the project was approved, and the prototype easily passed all tests.

In 1958, many graduate students from Kiev Polytechnic Institute were coming to the Computer Center, which was then still located in Feofania. The technical departments, including my specialized computer department, began filling up with top notch engineers. They immediately started developing the Universal Control Computer, which was later called the Dnepr.^[9]

It was a very complex project that was wrought with problems. Exercising my authority as a Deputy Director, I had to take over the entire project a year or so later. I believed at the time that we needed a design-construction department and convinced Glushkov to create it. Yuri Mitulinsky, a man with great organizational abilities, was assigned to manage this department, which quickly began designing and building computers. This was the beginning of establishing a staff base for large-scale projects.

Meanwhile, we had to address the following questions: what kind of machine would the Universal Control Computer be? What design principles would we employ? What would be its main features, structure, and architecture?

Glushkov offered his ideas and general suggestions concerning how to make the machine and how it should function and control various processes. But he did not micromanage and trusted me to handle the details. The computer was designated to control of industrial processes and we also had to learn them.

I wrote letters to many scientific research organizations, universities and industrial enterprises, saying that we were designing a universal control computer and were looking for people interested in creating such a machine that could also envision its applications and would agree to work with us – helping to formulate the requirements for the computer. I sent out over one hundred letters, but we only received four positive responses, including the Kharkov Institute of Organic Chemistry. The other organizations either did not answer at all or sent meaningless replies.

I was forced to bury myself in books about measurement devices, regulators, servo-mechanisms and other technologies. At that time, no unified system of measurement technology existed. Generally, most measurement devices used only scales and pointers, where the position of the pointer on the scale would indicate the level of the parameter.

In a control computer, the data for a process had to be input automatically, in accordance with the computer's instructions. So there emerged the problem of connecting the computer with the control object. It was namely at our department of specialized computers that a unit was developed to execute those functions: the Unit for Communication with the Object, or USO [in Russian: Ustroistvo svyazi s ob'ektom]. The USO's designers quickly understood the need to standardize electrical output signals from `measurement devices and input those signals to servo-mechanisms. This forced many measurement technology specialists to think about standardizing signal levels to and from sensors. At that time, hundreds of such devices existed. While attending conferences, seminars, and visiting various enterprises, I repeatedly discussed these problems with the concerned scientists in order to begin working on the concept of the future SO.

As far as the arithmetic unit, data storage, and the principles of their construction, there were no problems; however, many technological difficulties emerged because reliable transistors were still not available in the Soviet Union, and ferrite memory on miniature cores did not even exist yet.

December 2, 1988

The ferrite rod is a very reliable part and ferrite memory devices have existed for more than twenty years. They were eventually replaced with semiconductor memory devices. The Universal Control Computer's storage unit based on miniature ferrite rods was the first in our nation.

The human heart is not an oxy-ferrite rod that never wears out, but a piece of living tissue in an organism. Like everything living, it changes over time and grows old. However, the conditions in which a human being finds him or herself are the main contributors to aging, not time.

In the beginning of 1942 at Tyumen Hospital No. 3330, where I spent about two months after being wounded near Kalinin, an attending doctor asked me:

"Do you have any complaints? "

"Yes. My heart is beating too fast."

My heart, which was not used to me being active after being bedridden for such a long time, was beating loudly in my chest after I had to walk upstairs for my medical exam, and for some reason it did not slow down.

"Ah, this kind of thing happens all the time with young men. Next!"

They sent me back to the army and in May, I was transferred to a boggy Northwest front with its hard spring rains, its frigid January temperatures and the never ending artillery bombardment.

Even if there had only been one artillery shell daily – they flew over my head accompanied by a terrible whistling screech, or exploded nearby – the total would have come to 300, the number of days I was there. But there were many days when the ground was littered with shells, the snow turned black, and the mighty forests were reduced to charred tree stumps. My already weak heart had to endure all that without the benefit of a ferrite rod...

Today, for the second time the physicians did not let me walk the control distance of 1300 meters because my cardiogram was not normal. In fact, it was even worse than when I arrived at the sanitarium. My heart is still unable to cope with the endurance tests, although years ago, it could handle much more: during night marches to the Dnepr we tramped 50-60 kilometers so the enemy would not see us – and that was nothing. However, I do remember one old soldier who walked and walked with us, and then suddenly fell over dead – his heart simply gave out.

None of the soldiers complained about heart problems to the army medics. Some may have tried, but I never did. In February 1943, during the battles near Staraya Russa, after each 100-150 meters of walking I needed to rest, sit on a stump or lean against a tree. My left shoulder blade felt like an awl was being driven through it and the pain was intolerable. When I stopped, the pain subsided slowly, and then I walked on...

When the Universal Control Computer was ready for calibration, I tried to make sure that all the work on the machine would take place in my department. During all the years that we worked on it, I tried to base its construction principles and main features on the wide variety of proposed applications.

When the word about the Universal Control Computer got out in the Soviet Union, many organizations sent representatives to negotiate for its delivery. So we had a lot of choices. However, this was not a simple question. First, for every selected customer it was necessary to prepare and install the machine and match it to a specific technological process. Second, we had to be sure that the computer landed in skilled hands, so we asked customers to send their specialists to us for preliminary training. Third, we looked for customers capable of signing comprehensive contracts and supplying at least a portion of the transistors, diodes and other electronic parts, which were necessary to manufacture the computer.^[10]

A wide introduction of the Universal Control Computer could only happen if it were mass-produced. At that time, the Sovnarkhozes acted as regional executive centers to help solve many complex issues by local authorities, and here I got lucky. When I came to P.I. Kudin, Director of the Department of Industry of the Kiev Sovnarkhoz, I told him about the Universal Control Computer: its applications, the great demand for it, and the need to mass-produce it. After some consideration, he recommended the Radiopribor Factory where Kotlarevsky was the director.

I did not want to approach the director of the factory alone, so I asked Glushkov to accompany me and we went together.

To our great joy, Kotlarevsky agreed to mass-produce the computer immediately. He only wanted to know one thing – the size of the computer. Since his plant manufactured oscilloscopes, we compared the two machines, saying that the UCC was five to six times larger than an oscilloscope. He was satisfied with our answer and promised to prepare the premises, hire the assemblers and, if necessary, provide the staff to finalize the computer's documentation. We left in a state of euphoria, delighted with this energetic director. I realized my mistake –comparing the computer with a simple oscilloscope – much later.

In order to begin the mass-production of the UCC, we needed to successfully demonstrate its broad applications, versatility and provide full documentation.

The primary control and administrative sites for demonstrating the Universal Control Computer's potential had already been designated: the Bessemer converter at the Dneprodzerzhinsk Metallurgy Plant; the carbonization column at the Slavyansk Soda Plant, the Sheet Metal Works at the 61 Communards Shipyard in Nikolayev; and a military academy in Kiev.

The following work was performed at the chosen sites: analyzing algorithmic systems, working with the computer interface, training of personnel, and adjusting the machine. The mass-production of the Universal Control Computer required enormous labor, persistence and the solution of a myriad of problems.

Of course, acknowledging the need for a universal control computer did not happen on its own. During that period, everybody was captivated by the special purpose computers such as Steel-1, Steel-2, and specialized on-board computers. I remember the article, "The General Purpose Universal Computer," which I wrote for the magazine Automation and Telemechanics. They returned it saying that the problem wasn't real. This was in 1958, when an American magazine described the RW-300 computer, noting multi-purpose usage as its main advantage.

In 1959, at the first national conference in Moscow for problems of control computers, I spoke about the Universal Control Computer. My report raised a number of questions and I was invited to be a part of a commission that prepared the recommendations. The beginning of our reports read: "to approve and support the development of universal control computers at the Ukraine Academy of Sciences." At the closing of the conference, Loskutov, who was the chief of the Department of Computer Technology at Gosplan, acted as if he was the Tsar himself. When he heard this phrase, he said:

"The universal control computers should be scrapped. They were created on some Academician's whim and nobody needs them. "

So the first phrase was deleted. It was pointless to argue with a self-enamored person who could wield such tremendous power.

December 5, 1988

Forty seven years ago, wounded soldiers lay ten to a room at the Tyumen hospital and listened to Yuri Levitan talk about our troops' offensive near Moscow: the Red Army regiments had forged ahead through the ice and snowstorms, forcing the Germans out of the cities, towns and villages, which they had captured earlier.^[11] Lying next to me was an old soldier who was wounded near the same Kalinin grain elevator, where I had been hit in October of that same year. From our observation point, we could clearly see the grain elevator, about 700 to 800 meters away. Our infantry trenches were in-between. In 1941, our infantry had not yet started digging common ground trenches. In accordance with Red Army statutes, each soldier was supposed to dig his own hole in the ground and stay there, but sitting alone in a hole without communication was dangerous and inefficient. Later, we started to dig long common trenches that connected the many individual holes. For us, the ground hillocks in front of each hole were clearly visible. Inexperienced soldiers dug shallow holes, which made them easy targets for the German snipers, who were perched on the upper floors of the grain elevator tower. If any of our soldiers were to get up or even peek out of the holes to see outside, shots would rain down on them.

But I digress...

In a way, our Universal Control Computer was also caught in a war, though a bloodless one, caused by the bureaucratic reluctance to understand and support an innovative project. This forced us to work in as if we were at war – the adjustment of the machine went on around-the-clock.

I would come to work at eight o'clock in the morning, spend about an hour functioning as a Deputy Director – reading, preparing, and signing documents. The rest of the time was occupied working on the computer project. I typically returned home no earlier than midnight. On my way home, I usually reread the incoming mail. Such was my normal job mode – excluding business trips – for three years.

It was also very difficult to work with manufacturers. We were horrified when we received the first batch of computers from the plant. Every soldering connection – there were over a 100,000 of them – was abominable, causing permanent failure. Most of the 30,000 jack contacts were unreliable and constantly came loose. This computer was impossible to adjust, but the reasons for such poor quality became clear only after visiting the plant where the computers were assembled.

Because of my careless remark that the computer was five times larger than an oscilloscope, the director of the plant recruited young men and women fresh out of high school to work on the project. Armed with soldering irons, they "soldered" the computer together as best as they could, constantly breaking jack pins with their careless handling. When the deadline for the installation of the first computer in the Bessemer shop was approaching, we were forced to re-solder almost all of the connections, as well as change many of the contacts. Only then were we able to perform the adjustments.

I remember the difficult days when I gathered the whole team and everybody else who could help us, and said:

"I understand that the work is very difficult. But during the war, the conditions were even worse. Trust me, you are much better off now than our soldiers were!" This was my appeal to the young people – most of whom were 23-25 years old. I was 35, only 10 years older, but with wartime experience, which added independence and a greater sense of responsibility. My words produced results: everybody redoubled their efforts.

The State Commission managed by Academician Dorodnitsyn arrived to approve the first computer. The commission also included the manufacturers' representatives as well.

The trial tests of the computer began: performance testing, heat testing, reliability during element changes, etc. The members of the commission provided the problems and the testing went on day and night for a week. The commission rated the machine very highly, but also noted that since it was the very first semiconductor control computer in the Soviet Union, it would require additional testing at the installation points a year later.

At the time, the recommendation for mass-production was given, though the first models were very poor. The manufacturing technology remained inadequate because the plant employees continued to ignore all of our requests and advice. This was a very difficult year; I was forced to repeatedly visit the plant where the Universal Control Computer was being assembled. About five years later, I went to Sweden to give a speech at the IFAC-IFIP symposium on industrial implementation of computers. Upon my return, I met with Valentin Zgursky, who at the time was the senior technologist of the manufacturing plant. He asked me:

"Boris, why are you so gloomy?"

"In the United States and United Kingdom, computers are already available to those who need them, but here in the USSR..." I waved my hand, expressing my frustration.

"Well, I must confess," said Zgursky, "when you brought the Universal Control Computer project to our plant for mass-production, I did everything possible to make sure it would never succeed!"

I was speechless from this unexpected revelation.

"But now I am ready to kneel before you," he continued "I need your help to install it in the automatic galvanizing shop. I have finally understood its awesome potential!"

I remember that his request made me extremely happy. It meant that our computer customers had finally become aware of its possibilities. And if that was the case, then we could catch up to the developed capitalist countries!

After my meeting with Zgursky, it finally became clear why the beginning of mass-production had been so difficult: due to my naiveté, I believed that every new invention should receive immediate support, and that resistance to technological progress was not real and existed only in fictional stories.

At last, we finished manufacturing and fine-tuning the Dnepr models that were going to be installed at industrial enterprises slated for final testing of their capabilities and flexibility. These first sold models were only partially adjusted. The final complex calibrations were made by my department designers, with the assistance of customer specialists.

Many enterprises were preparing for the implementation of Dnepr computers at the same time. In the end, I was able to achieve high quality results and rapid completion of the project.

Dnepr's debugging was completed. The computers were manufactured according to customer contracts as part of their planned arrangement. Unfortunately, we greatly underestimated the expenditures. To be more precise, we did not expect that the manufacturers would ask such a high price for the completed computers.^[12] We had a shortage of funds and were unable to pay for all of the computer models. The plant demanded that we fulfill our contractual obligations and sent angry letters to the Academy of Sciences and the City Committee Communist Party complaining that they were suffering losses. They threatened to stop production of the new computer series for new customers.

Lucky for us, we found a way around this problem. In my department, I had a man by the name Junkovsky. Previously, he had worked in the financial department of the Ukrainian State Planning Ministry. He invited the manager of the State Plan Ministry financial department to come and learn about the Dnepr. They were so impressed with the project and our youthful enthusiasm that the Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers decided to give us a million rubles to complete the project.^[13]

Thus the business was saved, along with the Dnepr. We started a comprehensive, round-the-clock work at the installation sites. The State Commission headed by Academician Dorodnitsyn offered to investigate and test two systems – in Dneprodzerzhinsk and Nikolayev. I do not remember the details of the trips and or the testing, but they were quite successful. However, one incident comes to mind. During the meeting of the Commission, the director of the Dneprodzerzhinsk plant had shown little interest in the system's implementation. He was not impressed by Dorodnitsyn's words about the possibilities for future development and the use of a control computer at the plant. He yawned, fidgeted and appeared completely disinterested in the computer or its potential for the plant, barely tolerating the presence of the obtrusive academician.

In Nikolayev, things were just the opposite. The chief engineer of the enterprise, Mr. Ivanov, did not leave the Commission even for a minute. He proudly pointed out the improvements and the great value the implementation of computers had brought the plant. He clearly described the future prospects, which we found very charming.

I remember thinking: "That is why the work in Dneprodzerzhinsk was so hard and the Nikolaev project was so successful." The consequences were also very telling: in Nikolaev, a huge computer center of the Shipbuilding Ministry was soon created; it supported all Ukrainian shipyards. In Dneprodzerzhinsk, the computers were installed, but the systems developed slowly and worked badly.

Later, when Dnepr's mass-production had begun, proposals for joint work poured in. However, we were forced to restrict our service to advice and consultation only. I organized a seminar on control computers and systems, which quickly became very popular across the country, attracting representatives from dozens of cities and hundreds of organizations. One outcome of the seminar was the creation of the Ukrainian journal Control Computers and Systems.

December 9, 1988

Today, I remember December 1942, when I was with the 55th Infantry Division near Gorby, a village that had been completely obliterated during the war. I recall frigid temperatures of minus 30-40° C. Our division was thrown across the neck of the semi-surrounded 16th German Army, cutting off the Ramush Corridor and, together with other regiments, we tied the noose around the Germans. The enemy used all available artillery weapons against us, anything that could reach Gorby. After each artillery attack the ground turned black, as if the snow had been scraped from the field. As soon as our battery began to fire, the Germans responded almost immediately with return fire. We dug deep trenches in the ground for the guns and covered them with two or three layers of wood logs. At the battlefront, it was even more difficult; the frozen ground did not yield easily and we had to dig in the open, since the woods were annihilated by the hurricane of explosions...

Yesterday, doctors told me that I should not go outside if the temperature reaches below minus 10° C. Otherwise, I could have a vascular spasm that would be very dangerous. But long ago near Gorby, both my lungs and heart withstood not only the frigid cold, but also the hell of artillery fire, which nobody who survived that battle could ever forget.

Late in 1959, when Glushkov returned from a Moscow meeting with his doctoral thesis advisor Alexander Kurosh, he surprised me with a proposal to become his replacement as the Institute Director. Glushkov said, "Kurosh thinks that I am spread too thin and instead should be focusing my efforts in one scientific direction where I can really do a lot. In order to accomplish this, I need to delegate the organizational work to someone else and spend all my free time on research."

I told Glushkov that I could not accept the offer, but was willing to take on all of the organizational work. I felt the effects of this decision a year later:

"Boris, the staff wants to know which one of us is the director?" Glushkov once said.

I decided not to remind him about our conversation and the obligations I had promised to fulfill, but instead asked him to release me from my duties as deputy director. Being a department chief was enough for me.

About three years before his death, Glushkov surprised me again by nominating me as a corresponding member of the Ukraine Academy of Sciences.^[14] He added, "Really Boris, there are very few directors who are brave and courageous enough to support their opponents!"

I remember feeling very uncomfortable hearing such a strange comment. Then I laughed, mumbled something, and tried to leave Glushkov's office as soon as possible. Our birth dates were the only thing we ever had in common, but I was born two years before him, on August 24, 1921.

December 15, 1988

Forty five years ago today my older brother, Lev Malinovsky, perished. He was a T-34 tank commander. Being a tanker was an extremely difficult and dangerous duty during the war, perhaps the hardest of all assignments. Tanks were always at the leading edge of the battle. They were bombed by aviation, shot at by artillery and damaged by anti-tank mines. In battle, losses among tank personnel were even greater than among the infantry. Tankers often died burning alive inside their tanks. It was an impossible miracle to come out alive from a tank that was hit and on fire.

After each shot of the tank gun, the inside of the cabin filled with smoke and fumes. When a tank was struck by infantry fire, the internal metal cover shattered and flying shrapnel could wound or kill the crew. Moreover, the sound of the explosions inside the tank felt like someone was beating your head with a hammer.

My parents informed me of Lev's death 4 months after it happened.

"This terrible wound is still bleeding" my father wrote to me when I was at the front. I still think about him and my wound continues to bleed to this day. I loved my brother very much; to me, he seemed fatherly in his appearance: almost 2 meters tall, eternally kind, with hands that could do anything. And he was gone at the age of 24 years and 13 days.

My parents loved each other and their children very much, but fate was very cruel to them. Their first child, Konstantin, died from scarlet fever when he was only 2 years old. The next eldest son, Lev, perished in the war. My sister Helen was born after me. She finished college with an advanced degree during the difficult war years and defended her Candidate's thesis a few years later. In February 1958, she died in my mother's arms from an incurable cancer. We saved the notebook where she wrote things she wanted to say to Mother, Father and me, because she could not speak.

When I was told of my brother Lev's death, I remember thinking: "If I die, that will be the end of the Malinovskys." My parents must have also thought about it and about me, especially since the war was still raging.

February 15, 1989

I have been home for two months now, but have not touched my diary. I am gradually getting used to life again – at home, on the street, and at work. The rehabilitation process is very slow. "You need very small, step-by-step changes," my surgeon Amosov told me. But at times I was just fed up. My wife and children help enormously, saving me with their love, care, and faith in me. I received many supportive letters from my wartime comrades. Every one of them wrote: "Keep your chin up. Do not give up. Take control of yourself and you'll beat this illness." When I returned to work, there again, I felt my colleagues' support, understanding, and desire to help in every way. I was going to get better, no matter what...

The mass-producing of the Dnepr went much better after its approval by the State Commission. Kotlarevsky took every measure to improve production technology and the shops worked at full capacity. Customers bought the computers like mad. During his report at a meeting of the city communist economy leaders, Glushkov glowingly described the industrial applications of computers and at the same time, complained that there were not enough Dneprs being manufactured. Evidently, someone caught wind of these remarks, or perhaps it was easier to solve economic management problems during the Sovnarkhoz period, because soon Kotlarevsky was given the job of creating a plant for control computers in Kiev. The plant was built in record time, just 3 years, and began to produce Dnepr computers. Kotlarevsky's wife, Olga, picked out the colloquial name Dnepr for the Universal Control Computer, and it stuck.

I would like to add an aside to my diary.

In the middle of 1962, Glushkov suggested that I prepare a Doctoral thesis for the degree of Doctor of Technical Sciences based on my published scientific work. I decided to make one book in which I compiled all of the articles I had written for various magazines. The thesis was published one year later under the title "Control Computers and Production Automation" (Moscow, 1963). My defense was in January 1964.

This is an excerpt from the stenographic notes of the scientific council meeting:

The Chairman: Academician Victor Glushkov has the floor.

Academician Glushkov: In Professor Temnikov's response, he mentions my contribution to the development of the computer. So first of all, I would like to say that although Boris Malinovsky and I managed things together, over ninety percent of the work, especially in the final phase, was done by Boris Nikolayevich alone. Therefore, all of the positive comments about the Universal Control computer rightfully belong to him.

... Cybernetics begins when the conversation stops and the real work starts.

... In a very real sense, Malinovsky's work has helped cybernetics to serve and support our economy and our nation.

It is no wonder that we have heard 43 responses of successful applications of the Control Computer. People in every corner of this nation have a keen interest in the computer itself and the variety of its applications.

The other value of this work is the fact that it stimulated a great deal of new research. In 1957, when the project started, there was great skepticism about its potential. In the beginning, any idea can easily be killed – and at that time, there were plenty of skeptics.

...The fact that we reached the end and implemented the mass-production of the computer is an enormous achievement.

...At the very beginning, people said that the team was relatively small, that it had virtually no experience in computer design. They cited many examples of various organizations where the development of computers was carried out by teams of one to two thousand specialists, using powerful experimental workshops, etc.

We could easily vote to not only award the degree of Doctor of Sciences, but the Hero of Socialist Labor as well, because of the supreme effort and amount of work done here. Just to explain this project to lay people – the blueprints alone weight more than the computer itself. It is a tremendous volume of work. There is enough material here to write several Candidate and Doctor of Sciences theses.

In conclusion, I would like to say that without a doubt, this work has had an enormous economic effect and was broad reaching in terms of its scientific significance; it required huge personal sacrifices and the endurance of highly stressful conditions. It deserves the highest approval on all counts, and its author/project manager should be awarded the degree of the Doctor of Technical Sciences.

*****

The Institute of Cybernetics proposed that the Dnepr's designer team be awarded the Lenin prize, the highest public award in the Soviet Union. Simultaneously, Glushkov was nominated to receive the Lenin prize for his research on the theory of digital automatons, which he was awarded in 1964. We were enormously proud of Victor Mikhailevich and his accomplishment. It was the first high-level award for our institute.

Unfortunately, the Committee responsible for assigning the Lenin prize sent the materials about the Dnepr to a specialist in analog computers, who was a strong opponent of digital technology. He now lives in the United States and I do not mention his name here because that was old business.

After receiving a "negative" response, the Committee rejected the nomination.

About eight or nine years later, Academician Keldysh, who headed the Awards Committee for Lenin prizes in the 1960s, said to Glushkov:

"Back then, we didn't understand the value of the work done at your institute. You were ahead of your time."

After Dnepr's success, we embarked on many other computing projects. Some of them received awards, orders and recognition. Yet, the first Dnepr remains dearest to me; it is displayed in the Moscow Polytechnic Museum to this day.

I am grateful to fate for my life, for the many years I worked with the remarkable scientific team at the Ukraine National Academy of Sciences Institute of Cybernetics, and for the opportunity to publish this book about the extraordinary computer scientists in the former Soviet Union. And, finally, I am grateful that it was not my fate to lie in one of the countless common graves of the Great Patriotic War.

9 May 1994
Kiev

^[8] Translator's Note: At that time in the Soviet Union, two years of Army service was mandatory for all healthy male students; 3 years were required of other young people (4 years for the Navy). In 1967, the Army service was shortened to 2 years (3 years for the Navy) and to 1 year for students in 1967. Today, military service is still obligatory for males in all former Soviet countries.

^[9] Translator's Note: Dnepr (Dnipro in Ukrainian) – is the largest river in Ukraine and flows through Kiev. It should be noted that the computer was given the Russian version of the river's name, reflecting Russia's dominance over the rest of the Soviet Union.

^[10] Translator's Note: Here the author hints at one of the biggest problems of the Soviet economic system, where a complete lack of parts and materials was common due to the inflexible of its central planning and distribution system. Nobody could buy products through a simple contract and payment if the product was distributed by the state plan. So, Malinovsky had to look at the actual situation of manufacturing under these conditions.

^[11] Translator's note: Yuri Levitan was a famous Soviet radio announcer from 1940 through 1960, who had a fabulous deep bass voice. During the Great Patriotic War, he announced all of the official Soviet government messages from the Information Bureau.

^[12] Translator's Note: Because the Soviet Union had a closed economic system, price setting was inconsistent. It depended more on personal contacts between manufacturing managers and state body leaders rather than on actual cost of the resources. Another problem that the Dnepr project faced – along with every other technical process in the Soviet Union – was a designer's inability to choose alternative manufacturers.

^[13] Translator's Note: According to the official exchange rate at that time, this was equal to approximately $1.66 million dollars.

^[14] Author's Note: Becoming an Academician was an extremely prestigious position and one was rarely nominated by one's own institute director.