Andrei Ershov and the Soviet Information Age

Abstract

G rego ry A fin o g en o v I'm not original. My ideal is the creative mind, or, in terms of mottoes: IBM 's "Think" and the poetic "never a day without a line."-A. P. Ershov When Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985, the Soviet Union was suddenly confronted with two major, imminent transformations. The first was the restructuring and liberalization o f Soviet society under the banner o f glasn o st' and free market reform, the subject o f the most influential studies o f the late Soviet era, which depict the break o f the early perestroika years primarily in ideological or personal terms.* 1 The second, in a longer timeframe, was the arrival o f the post-Fordist information economy, heralded in part by the worldwide explosion in personal computing over the course of the decade. Although it has received little attention, the plan to modernize and retool the Soviet economy using advanced scientific and technological means was integral to Gorbachev's promise. If the Soviet Union was to present an effective counterpart to the "capitalism o f the age o f electronics and informatics, o f computers and robots"-as he put it in his address to the 27th Party Congress-it needed to turn the "acceleration o f scientifictechnical progress" to its advantage, making the most o f the "transformation I would like to thank Loren Graham, Terry Martin, Rachel Koroloff, and Kritikas anonymous reviewers for their comments on previous versions of this essay.

Digitalization of Russian Education: Changing Actors and Spaces of Governance

“…The newly introduced school subject had to foster a "communist upbringing" and to enhance students' understanding of the world through objective mathematical models (Monakhov 1986, 148). Prerequisites for international collaboration existed long before the USSR "opened up" to the West, as Soviet pedagogues and programmers continuously studied, for example, US-developed programmed instruction and other international experiments in computer-based learning (Davydov and Rubtsov 1991;Afinogenov 2013;Tatarchenko 2019). Moreover, despite the fact that the late-Soviet developments in education technology were shortlived due to the collapse of the Soviet regime, these experiences continue to shape current expertise in and imaginaries of digital technology and its role in society (Tatarchenko 2019).…”

The Emergence of Computing Disciplines in Communist Czechoslovakia: What’s in a (Sovietized) Name?

“…Following Afinogenov [16], we connect the beginning of the East Bloc shift from cybernetics to Western-style informatics primarily with Andrey Petrovych Ershov , who was very active in redefining the latter term in the Soviet Union. The shift became salient especially after 1976, when F.L.…”

“…Yet, due to this set-up, the jurisdiction of cybernetics in this geographic region significantly changed several times during the past few decades. 5 See, for example, Ershov's statement from 1988: Although informatics has taken the lead, "we [in the Soviet Union] are not attempting to change either the name of the Council on Cybernetics or the traditions of its first chairman, Aksel' Ivanovich Berg" (a third source quoting Ershov as cited in [16]). Also note that it was not before 1990 that the word "informatics" was added to the official title of the scientific societies focused on control and computing in both republics that then formed the Czechoslovak Federation.…”

The Emergence and Historical Development of Informatics and Computing Disciplines in Selected European Countries and the USA

“…V důsledku nabízejícího se rétorického spojení kybernetiky a Leninových myšlenek o řízení (Afinogenov, 2013) se v dalších letech daleko více začal používat právě termín řízení, upravlenije (Gerovitch, 2004). Formovala se celá nosná oblast označovaná jako tzv.…”

“…I přesto kybernetiku ještě v roce 1988 (rok jeho úmrtí) s odkazem na tradici bránil, a to jako předseda rady pro kybernetiku v sovětské akademii věd (Afinogenov, 2013). Dle soudu Gerovitche (2004) Na přelomu 70. a 80. let docházelo ke stále častějšímu nahrazování termínu "kybernetika" výrazem "informatika" v souvislosti se studiem a aplikací počítačů a obecně informačních technologií (Rindzeviciute, 2010;Kolin, 2006).…”