STICKING POINTS 275their advice, he boasted to Komsomol leaders in April 1987 that the
USSR had succeeded in building its own supercomputer. Velikhov,
who was present, was rendered speechless. Gorbachëv had swallowed
a bowlful of nonsense. Sagdeev wrote to Gorbachëv pointing this out
- and Arbatov delivered the letter in person. Other well-informed
leading scientists made the same overture to Gorbachëv.^2 But Gor-
bachëv refused to intervene. Perhaps he preferred to believe the
cheering fiction rather than face up to reality. Possibly Zaikov was
culpable for encouraging the naivety. Gorbachëv liked to talk about
the progress under way. He told Bush that December: ‘Our scientists
are now producing super-computers, personal and mini-computers
and giant computers for industry.’ He had Velikhov at his side and
asked him to specify the projected quantity. Velikhov mumbled the
figures, presumably deliberately.^3 Only at the end of 1988 did Gor-
bachëv come to his senses when the Politburo was discussing the
computing industry: ‘Wait, don’t hurry with a claim. First verify if it is
true. Computers are not tractors.’^4
Gorbachëv felt cheered by a trip to the north-west of Moscow at
Zelenograd, where the USSR’s nascent information technology indus-
try was based. He knew that the country lagged far behind America,
but convinced himself that the Soviet economy had enough computers
for its basic needs. The Zelenograd personnel’s enthusiasm impressed
him. He wanted to support their initiatives. It was Gorbachëv’s opin-
ion that the USSR would soon become a force in industrial electronics.^5
He soon recognized that conditions for research were far from being
optimal – and the living conditions of the researchers also left a lot to
be desired.^6
On 17 May 1987 Defence Minister Sokolov alerted the Politburo
to suggestions that the Americans might start testing components of
their programme, involving X-ray lasers and nuclear explosions, as
early as 1991–1995 – his people had read what Weinberger was telling
the US media and drawn their own conclusions. Sokolov urged the
need to accelerate work on the Soviet rival programme. The Politburo
refused to let him stampede them.^7 Its main response was to put
Maslyukov in charge of monitoring what was happening in America,^8
and on 10 July the State Commission on Military-Industrial Problems
met to consider these questions. Shevardnadze stressed that ‘the world
community’ had continuing worries about the Defense Initiative;
he called for a strengthening of Soviet propaganda. Vitali Shabanov,
Deputy Defence Minister for Armaments, doubted that a massed