How Not to Network a Nation. The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet

(Ben Green) #1

Staging the OGAS, 1962 to 1969 155


In the late 1960s, after these and other limited local successes, top lead-
ers began to heed some of Glushkov’s calls more carefully. Dmitry Ustinov
commanded the heads of the military ministries to heed Glushkov’s orders
while he continued work on the L’viv System. After securing Ustinov’s top
brass support, Glushkov claimed that as early as the late 1960s, the auto-
mated management systems in factories throughout the empire provided
the outline of what would become the OGAS: “it was planned from the
very beginning that the whole system would apply across all spheres at
once, so some rudiments of an all-state system were conceived”^88 (figure
4.19). After this chapter’s discussion of the bold vision and rocky institu-
tional landscape that supported the OGAS Project, the following chapter
chronicles and comments on what happened when, in 1970, the Soviet
centralized command decided to review the OGAS proposal to decentralize
the economy by network in earnest.
In summary, in this chapter I have examined the OGAS design think-
ing that motivated Glushkov and his teams and the initial obstacles that


Figure 4.17
Diagram of an ASU network at the industry level, about 1969.

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