This book contains a collection of thoroughly refereed papers derived from the First IFIP WG 9.7 Conference on Soviet and Russian Computing, held in Petrozavodsk, Russia, in July 2006. The 32 revised papers were carefully selected from numerous submissions; many of them were translated from Russian. They reflect much of the shining history of computing activities within the former Soviet Union from its origins in the 1950s with the first computers used for military decision-making problems up to the modern period where Russian ICT grew substantially, especially in the field of custom-made programming.

This book is the first compendium on the development of the computer in Russia to appear in the West. After briefly illuminating the history of Russian mechanical calculation devices, the book largely focuses on the first generations of (military and civilian) electronic computers, most of which were developed in the Soviet Union during the "Space-Race" and the Cold War, simultaneously with similarly fundamental developments in computing in the U.S.A. The reader is introduced to computers and cybernetics from mathematical, technical, social and cultural perspectives through archive material and through texts by some of the preeminent veterans of Russian computing (historians, engineers, military historians).

early computers, programming languages and systems in retrospective, microelectronics industry emergence, computer science curricula, teamwork in programming, key events in computing history, scientific biographies, computing perspectives, international cooperation in R&D

The conference will be held in Moscow Higher School of Economics on October 6 8, 2020 to follow traditions of the first four SORUCOMs The conference is aimed at retention of the history of design and development of computers, software and information systems Key historical events and outstanding persons are also in the focus of SORUCOM Working languages Russian, English (synch translation) Conference Topics History of computing devices from mechanical calculators to supercomputers Programming languages and systems in retrospective History and evolution of artificial intelligence Microelectronics in Russia Programming the second literacy Software and hardware teams and organization Key events in the history of computing Biographies and memoirs Social aspects of the history of computing Evolution of Internet Computing perspectives International scientific cooperation SORUCOM 2020 welcomes original, previously unpublished and high quality papers addressing the topic

Russian computer scientists have been much in the news recently, with allegations of hacking and of interference in the US presidential election. This book explores the social background of Russian computer scientists. It considers the excellent education system of the Soviet Union which greatly encouraged computer science, highlights the different development path taken by computing in the Soviet Union/Russia compared to the path followed in the West and examines the post-Soviet migration of many Russian computer scientists, many of them Jewish, to other parts of the world. It discusses the difficulties many of these Russian computer scientists have had in assimilating in their new countries, both in work and in their wider situations, and reveals the existence around the world of many autonomous enclaves of highly intelligent, globally-minded people, with a huge capacity for high impact technical innovation and no allegiances to existing national, corporate and social structures or ideologies.

In this book, Slava Gerovitch argues that Soviet cybernetics was not just an intellectual trend but a social movement for radical reform in science and society as a whole. Followers of cybernetics viewed computer simulation as a universal method of problem solving and the language of cybernetics as a language of objectivity and truth. With this new objectivity, they challenged the existing order of things in economics and politics as well as in science. The history of Soviet cybernetics followed a curious arc. In the 1950s it was labeled a reactionary pseudoscience and a weapon of imperialist ideology. With the arrival of Khrushchev's political "thaw," however, it was seen as an innocent victim of political oppression, and it evolved into a movement for radical reform of the Stalinist system of science. In the early 1960s it was hailed as "science in the service of communism," but by the end of the decade it had turned into a shallow fashionable trend. Using extensive new archival materials, Gerovitch argues that these fluctuating attitudes reflected profound changes in scientific language and research methodology across disciplines, in power relations within the scientific community, and in the political role of scientists and engineers in Soviet society. His detailed analysis of scientific discourse shows how the Newspeak of the late Stalinist period and the Cyberspeak that challenged it eventually blended into "CyberNewspeak."

A PDF version of this book is available for free in open access via the OAPEN Library platform, www.oapen.org. This book examines the significance of networks among the firms operative in the contemporary Russian software industry in the St. Petersburg region.