Why the Soviet Internet Failed 

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The more video I watch on the soviet economy the more I realize that the main advantage the US economy had was their willingness to share game changing military technology with their civilian economy. Which created vast synergy and efficiencies and many positive feedback loop. Sharing really is caring and the US culture being able to share development with a wider swath of society really is the secret sauce that won them the cold war.

I was once directly involved in the "OGAS" project close to the end of the entire USSR. The part I was involved in, was called "АСУ Народное Образование" or "OGAS Education". The key problem that was discovered in my time there can be summarized as "garbage in - garbage out" problem. It was very clear that all the people involved in the management were trying to cheat on providing the data entry to achieve some advantage for themselves. One example of that was the total area of the floors and walls specified in the measurements of schools were far too much. Managers wanted to get more supplies, so they were tweaking the data a bit to get by. The same was happening at all levels, I'm afraid.

Soviets had excellent popular science books on computer-related subjects even in 1950s. But even though those books described in often fairly accurate details how people would use Internet in the future (dial up, search engines, electronic books, machine translation, etc), in reality, even the ordinary telephone network in the USSR remained in a sorry state at least into late 1970s, if not longer -- many people did not have a phone, and switchboard operators were still connecting long-distance calls.

My father worked for an US Army weapons lab. I remember, in my early teens, him telling me that he was able to access computers all over the country. He didn't talk much about work because it was, of course, classified. He did expose me to a lot of the electronics with manuals and parts that were commercial. It was only years later, when I was working on massively networked systems (I actually worked on the GE system you mentioned), that I recalled his comments.

One rudiment of this endeavor was the network of ЦНТИ (TsNTI) - Centers of Scientific Technical Information scattered across the USSR. As a university student in the 1990s I briefly worked in one of them. By the 1980s they were mainly equipped with IBM clones connected mostly through dialup, rarely with fiber-optic. They had by then lost their economic purpose and basically became imitational bodies, creating fake jobs for the director and "engineer" cronies. By late 1980 and early 1990s they mostly made money by renting out their premises to various computer and electronics shops. By mid 1990s most were gone, their buildings embezzled through various corrupt schemes. But they did in a way contribute to the internet adoption in Russia.

It failed because it used cccp/ip instead of tcp/ip In cccp/ip, client can't own static address. It must be assigned by dhcccp server

Soviet technology is quite interesting. In the USA, we were always working to create new types of electronics, while the soviets were still making the best out of vacuum tubes and germanium transistors. Today, many technicians are buying Soviet surplus parts to fix their vintage electronics.

The dot comrade bubble.

Interestingly the Chileans did a similar computer controlled central economy during Allende presidency. That was the brainchild of a British computer engineer to run the Chilean copper mines in the 1970s.

1956: one single computer costing 8 billion dollars save our lives 2023: 8 billion computers showing cat videos vasting our lives

Glushkov was truly a Victor Frankenstein of Soviet science. The elderly Party leadership wasn't interested in OGAS (which frankly was unrealistic) but was very interested in his ideas of transhumanism and reaching immortality through progress in biology and computing. That would be the nice topic to cover.

TCP/IP and the RFCs that standardized its development were the real genius behind DARPANET/ARPANET. Much of this came from research at Stanford and UCB in the 60's. Packet switching led to the development of ethernet systems and the infrastructure we know today. It is fascinating stuff, if a little bit tech-y.

Very interesting how many times the idea came up. Was seen as very promising. The goverment realized it would intefer with their personal power and wealth. And then shut it down. An exccellent example of some of the root issues of the USSR

Thank you Asianometry, you are one of the few English-language channels that do justice to the old Soviet Union without resorting to tankie apologetics.

As for sources as someone who has a masters in history I really appreciate the research you do and these are some of the better videos that deal with such complex topics and make these videos more watchable than most. Even the best historians are not perfect, we by custom always end our intros with “all errors are my own.” It’s important to be humble in the face of the past. Keep up the good work.

This totally got me thinking about the possibility of a nearby parallel reality where there's a cybernetic Soviet Union pushing ahead with their own 'Big Red' centralised network to counter the capitalist 'Big Blue'. Their "socialist-network" connects USSR, Soviet Bloc, China, Korea and Vietnam.

"Imagine if the Soviets had had modern computing tech, they could have achieved their Communist Utopia..." *China has entered the Chat* "Oh."

Ngl, Anatoly Kitov was really an exceptional character, signified by his hunger for wisdom and knowledge. Bro literally did maths in the battlefield.

Ironically, OGAS failed because of inter-factional disputes, whereas ARPANET succeeded on account of clear leadership structures and cooperation in government to get it done. So, what we expect is the 'capitalist' behavior and what is the 'socialist' behavior that we expect kind of got switched around, the same is the case with the Soviet Moonshot.

God I love this channel. You produce the EXACT conent I'm interested in, never missing. Keep it up

OGAS sounds very much like Chile's Project Cybersyn, the Salvador Allende era system (some of it computerized) to manage the Chilean economy that actually demonstrated some success until the September 1973 coup that deposed him.

Never interfere with a man's fiefdom if you wish to keep your Party membership... Truly interesting video, I'd not known that this came "close" to happening in the USSR.

OGAS would have quantified and tracked the means by which the Soviet leadership ran the Soviet economy. The materials they controlled were the very means of their power. To pass the tracking of those resources to computers would have taken away their power over those resources.

2:20 That's not what a "command economy" is. 2:25 Like a lot of people, you've confused "private property" with "personal property". 2:32 _That's_ what a command economy is.

Currently taking my PhD in cybernetics, but I did not know the role Sovjet cybernetics played in this story. Interesting and informative video

i'm glad that asianometry has good prowess for research

You never disappoint mate, keep up the good work! You're one of the few youtubers that always make me come back

Cool video @asianometry! I read the book Red Plenty by Francis Spufford, and towards the end, he briefly mentioned that there were efforts to digitalise production throughout the USSR like that. It's cool to hear more about it

Back in the days when you were able to not look like a weirdo wearing a lab coat for IT work

Imagine how more powerful the sovjet union would,ve been had their internet not failed.

They used to hit flies in outter space, now they can't even see the cardboard planes flying at a few hundred feet.

I'm a CS/philosophy student enamored by cybernetics. I'd love to see your take on Chile's Project Cybersyn, which I'm under the impression was developed farther than OGAS (at least, until Pinochet took over and destroyed it).

But seriously, if only Kitov had proposed leveraging existing telex networks instead of depending on the military.

Could you do a video about High Frequency Trading and all tech involved in that? Optiver is one of the bigger companies in the field.

I've really been enjoying your channel and the content. Hope you are able to keep going and doing well! Have a wonderful day and thank you for being you! 🍻🌎❤️🌮

Glushkov's ideas were rejected by Suslov and Kosygin in favor of the so-called Lieberman reforms -based on increasing the role of profit in economic calculations in planning. These reforms helped put the USSR into stagnation in the late 1970s, and Glushkov died a very bitter man. He said one of the reasons the party bosses rejected his ideas was because Lieberman's plan cost nothing but the paper it was printed on to implement, while Glushkov's plan cost billions of rubles and had an element of risk.

This reminds me a lot of “We”, by Yevgeny Zamyatin, in the way people hoped technology would allow for the creation of utopia. A great book for anyone interested in revolutionary russia or dystopian fiction in general, especially because it was published in 1924 and written by an actual Bolshevik. Also it’s almost certain that Orwell borrowed heavily from it to write 1984.

In 60s the Soviet economy was far from stagnation, which started in 70s. Thank you for another great video

Thank you for yet another carefully researched and thoughtful documentary. You seem to have found your niche in life.

What a fascinating story this is, and one I'd never heard of before. 👍 If a command economy could ever be made to work without a crushing bureaucracy and inefficiency, this is probably how it would need to be done.

ARPANET was much less ambitious, and the architecture was mostly designed to survive being bombed.

That was really interesting. I actually discovered Norbert Weiner's book on cybernetics in the school library back in the 80s. It was a fascinating and very inspiring book to read, and I'd say one of the best. The other big player of this era was John von Neumann.

Do a story on the economy of the Kuril Islands

Have you read about cybersyn? It was a Chilean project that was similar. Could be a cool video topic.

In the USSR the military-industrial complex was the most advanced and well resourced branch of the economy, with certain degree of internal (managed) competition. It pretty much existed as a parallel quasi-state and logically quite cautious of sharing/cooperating any of its resources and privileges in a way that would diminish its position, as it existed in a rigid low-trust totalitarian state with immovable status-quo. Power brokering at different state administration levels, not much dissimilar of the lobbying culture in the US, was pretty much the only channel of implementing innovations and just moving things ahead, since there's was no free market competition with independent actors, governed by impartial legal and judicial systems. From outside such a society might project an image of rigid unity, but in reality it is simply a long game of precariously balanced standoff between different wolf packs where only a strong leader can keep the whole enterprise in some working order -- the top alpha power-broker.

This is one of the very few channels where I click on the thumbs up before I have listened to the entire video. Informative and carefully researched, these are valuable history lessons.

The short answer is that the Soviets’ economic system just didn’t work. The lack of market incentives meant that their economy was bloated and inefficient, and had extreme difficulty generating technological advancements. While they could develop new technologies, it was difficult enough for them that the costs didn’t cover the benefits. So the only way they were able to grow was copying technologies that other countries had already developed, since they could literally get it for almost free via IP theft.

I love this video, and the explanation of how the Soviet unions Internet never really took off. Makes me think I would love to see a video by you, explaining how the Western Internet actually successfully came into being.

Bet more than a few elites breathed a sigh of relief when it became clear the party elites made some serious missteps when it came to this kind of technology. Had they built the system that was being proposed and adjusted the command economy to fit it, then most of us would have had very different experiences in our Econ 101 classes.

Opposition to OGAS from political bodies reminded me of Jack Ma getting into trouble after his radical financial algorithm proposition. However it may be argued the motivations from both sides were different in these seperate events, among other things.

One key difference that presents itself from listen to this video is that in the Soviet union the main issue was control. OGAS was proposed as an overarching control mechanism and the objections to it were essentially that it was an overarching control mechanism that will compete with humans who wished to retain control. ARPANET was coming as I am standard, fundamentally about sharing information and not about control. My impression is that it was essentially created and constructive to see what could be done with it rather then furthering specific government policy objectives. After all I gather it was initially connecting universities not government entities right? The USA certainly has many critics, but the general psychology of American society and it's technology industries, is to develop ideas unimpeded by political ideology and then explore how they can be adapted to suit the needs and desires of society at large. If hypothetically we assume that there is some truth in that it is quite obvious why it never worked in the Soviet Union, where the national psychology and ideology is the near complete antithesis!

Ironic that socialism failed because they didn't want to share.

One of the chief engineers responsible for SAGE said it never worked, they knew it never would have worked and it remained in use until the 1980s

As always, another educational opportunity not to be missed. It is interesting to note that AI seems to be the next opportunity on the road to digital hierarchies that is slowly following some of the same idiosyncrasies that the Soviets faced with mainframe computers and networking.

Who could have predicted government countrol being so inefficent?

Sounds like "The Forbin Project". Yes I remember the movie, it was pretty good. You haven't lived until you ran thicknet through a DARPA office and used a vampire tap.

It's really sad the USSR never made it to embrace computers or wide automation. It could have changed it significantly and the world history with it.

the thought of even a portion of a massive nations industrial capacity directly controlable via one computer interface seems so strange and amazing. Like some video game production order.

The variable speed heat pumps that run more often are supposed to do that because they work more efficiently running at 25-50% of their maximum capacity. As big a benefit as that is that they’re far quieter, usually almost silent, they help eliminate hot and cold spots, provide consistent heating or cooling rather than the up and down temperature swings of an on/off system, and they dehumidify the air to whatever you want when cooling far better than a standard AC unit. In cold climate they generally advise upsizing the variable speed by 1 ton more than the amount needed for cooling, which is something you can’t do by code for single stage. A normal ac system doesn’t respond to being oversized at all, resulting in excess humidity in the house. Multi-stage heat pumps can respond pretty well though to make the space more comfortable. Recently went from a single stage 5 ton heat pump from 2007 to carrier’s variable speed Infinity 4 ton after a lot of insulating. I was surprised looking at the heating curves at temperature that not only does the new cold-climate heat pump make far more heat below like 40*F but instead of consistently dropping, somewhere in the 40’s it increases heat output as temperature drops before starting to drop again. So it would be like finding out your heat pump moves more heat at 40* than at 45*. Probably just an internal consequence of programming changes by the inverter and controller though. Used to need aux heat below 30*, new one rarely goes over 50% consistently.electric usage is also half the old one. Also doubt we’ll ever need our aux heat ever again. Before getting a new system, people should consider how much they can save by adding insulation or reducing heating or cooling needs. Not just because it saves money in the long term, but because less heating or cooling load means you can downsize and save thousands by getting a smaller system. If you end up a tiny bit underpowered you can spend the money on improving insulation or windows or air-sealing. Our house used to kick on heat when it got down to 55-60, after adding more insulation in the ceiling it doesn’t unless it’s been under 50 for several night hours. Kind of annoys me actually because the thermal mass causes it to try to go above the set temp and run AC at night.

Would've been interesting to see how it would've developed differently from the Western internet if it went mainstream in Eastern Europe...

Proud to have a son of Glushkov’s post-doc as my scientific advisor.

I thought I was the only guy in the world remembering Gossplan... In fact I remember docummentaries from the late 70s? early 80s? Praising how Gossplan was the future for the world economy...

These videos should have at least 500k views. Very informative!

Great work, never heard of this before.

There is some deep irony in the failure of soviet internet. The corruption and split interests of many powerful institutions was the direct result of having no ability to confirm or share information fast enough to plan the economy. But precisely because of the bureaucracy implementing planned economy without such system caused, the idea was doomed to fail in such environment. Nowdays multinational companies use high level of automation to aid their resource management and planning, and achieve astonishing results because of it. It is safe to say computers and internet are very viable for planned production and resource management - and while it so far hasn’t removed the need for decision making, it has allowed much more detailed and informed decision making, while removed many levels of management those decisions rely on.

2:25 Yep and this is the basic concept of Proudhon anarchism theory, which is the most conservative socialist ideology. Possession is differentiated from Property. An individual (or a family) possesses something until they have no use of it.

I've been looking forward to a video that more closely talks about Soviet cybernetics ever since you mentioned them in your previous video!

This was a fascinating insight into how the self-defeating "Soviet way of doing things" turned what could have been a 10-year head start on the biggest technological achievement of the 20th century into an just another Soviet embarrassment to add to the pile. It appears that ultimately no amount of technology can fix a fundamentally broken way of looking at the world.

Apart from the hardware limitations, they had absolutely no idea of the monumental task of developing the necessary software

Very, very interesting! I'm an economist, but just enough old to have studied the Soviet & European economies in the 1970-80's. Then when personal computers and later the internet came along, I was an early adopter, even listening in on what standards ought to be adopted. It's very interesting everytime you get an overview spanning longer time frames, because very, very few ideas are really fundamentally completely new. There is always an evolution of ideas. And advanced meta ideas of what "information" actually is, and how it can be utilized through things like networking, have obviously been there long before most of society even heard of "the internet". The strongpoint of the rather anarchist way of liberal market economy is, that a huge number of competing ideas get a chance. Yes, in theory, a lot of resources get wasted on a lot of bad ideas, compared to an ideal planned society. Sadly, in both systems a lot of good ideas also get wasted. Though without a doubt, I much prefer giving "mad" entreprenours, scientists and inventors the freedom to experiment without asking for endorsement. Yes, a lot of inventions never leave the garage, but some computer apples do!

In 1988 a Soviet visitor told me they had cloned VAX mainframe hardware but their version had bugs in it.

awesome writeup! i studied AiISU from 2000. the uni dropped the ball due to lack of lecturers, lol. did not graduate, went working in IT from year one.

The USSR should have invested in cybernetics and computers instead of space flight, nukes and other nonsense.

Now imagine a science fiction movie or video game that deals with a Soviet internet AI collective gone rogue. A Soviet Skynet if you will

wow, this is some great insight into what always seemed a bizarre shortcoming of Soviet industry.. Hearing about the bureaucratic infighting makes me want to learn more about the topic

A reason wasn’t just corruption in the fear that individual power would be lost. It was that the state, as represented by the leaders and organizations, wanted to direct not just the economy, but the appearance of its success. In that undertaking, they needed to control the numbers. These systems would take that out of their hands, and spit out an objective accounting of how the economy was performing. But for the Soviet state, that would never do, and so these systems were doomed to failure.

One of the best topics I've seen so far here...

Personal greed will always beat central authority greed

The one thing that failed the Soviet internet. It's that bureaucracy exists for a reason. In the Soviet union, it was to protect the power of bureaucrats and military officers. Of course a decision maker wouldn't want their job being automated. That would lessen the opertunities for personal favours and drastically reduce their own personal power.

Private property and personal property are completely different Communism has no problem with personal property, the issue is with private property

I find it real funny how modern history books always told me at a glance that the ussr was incredibly centralized but the more you look at it you see that it was the opposite.

A big factor in the slowness to adopt computers was because for many decades no one with control over budgets in Russia knew anything about programming.

the more you look at it... corruption / inefficiency & protectionism were the downfalls of the USSR rather than ideology or communism itself.

Not gonna lie. I think the USSR would still exist today if they hadn't cancelled Kitov.

Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past, From the Future

The only thing I find dubitable is Soviet military computers being so far ahead of civilian computers. Of course, if by military computers you don't mean highly specialized ballistic computers, missile guidance systems, etc.

Imagine the pressure of being the central planner in Moscow trying to decide what to command OGAS to do.

as a few others have pointed out, the ogas story didn't end in 1970 but started, and it was to launch in the year 2000. also worth mentioning is that a lot of managers were actually *too* enthusiastic re: automation, and one of glushkov's biggest supporters was ustinov -- it wasn't as simple as 'bureaucrats versus technocrats.'

The Soviet internet... fascinating. I had no idea..... thank you kindly.

On the other hand, DEMOS cooperative and RELCOM network not just survived but evolved into what we know today as Runet... Although it took shape right at the end of 1980s, connected with EUnet in 1990 (which is a cool story on its own) and in 1991 was the only information channel during the coup... It also was a purely institution -science network I'd love to see a video on this topic :D

The ending is false. They actually achieved a unified centralized computer network in 1985 by gradually unifying and joining various local solutions. It wasn't OGAS as originally envisioned, but it was the closest thing practically achievable. The system was used in the 90s to correctly predict the disastrous results of the market reforms, but the political leadership didn't care.

I would like to commend the general comments about information gathering at the start of this video. I completely agree as to the importance of reading a wide range of opinion representing all potential biases.

Great Video. Chalk one more to Network Effects. But the russians (along with the chinese) are at it again, via standards bodies

I find it fascinating that the communist system and a command economy should have made it easier to build, and standardise What undermined this at every level was the soviet system which made it too easy to block it

Good video! One thing I think is important to mention is that there was/is a branch of socialists/communists/central planners who based their ideas around a command economy being achievable using computers back into the 1920s and 30s, so there was a little bit of ideological background to the idea I think.

I always think back to the stories where the ‘internet’ in eastern bloc countries was quite literally guys running floppies back and forth.

I don't see how a Soviet internet could have function. All soviet organisations were adherents of the information is power slogan up to eleven. Everything not explicitly released was classified and the idea of common people creating and sharing information was abhorrent to the regime including very tight control over photocopiers and typewriters. Home computers appeared only during the perestroika and even then in very limited quantity and the Gosplan considered giving electronics to the people an "unneeded luxury" and a "waste of resources". And using the word giving is applicable here as there was no vestige of a free enterprise there.

And it was all going to be brought to you by...the humble vacuum tube

Thank you for making another excellent video 👍