Soviet Computing and Technology Transfer: An Overview

For a long time, the Soviet pattern of development and use of computing differed from the West in terms of time-scale, philosophy, institutional arrangements, capital decisions, and applications. Starting in the late 1950s, a major political, military, and economic reassessment of the value of computing took place; during the next dozen years, the overall Soviet view moved much closer to that of the rest of the developed world. This new perception has been backed by large political and economic commitments. Apparently the Soviet leadership is hoping that computer technology will make the existing economic system more efficient and effective, and will thus help to avoid fundamental reforms that are politically unacceptable. A massive transfer of foreign technology over the last decade has made the Soviet computer industry less isolated than during the 1960s, but its interfaces with the outside world are still narrowly defined. Serious difficulties remain in trying to transplant a sophisticated and pervasive technology into a systemic environment very different from that in which it originated and thrived.