The Undoing of the OGAS, 1970 to 1989 163
counted on Kosygin’s support, but he too was away, pressing hands among
the mourning crowds in Cairo at Gamal Abdel Nasser’s funeral, who had
died of a heart attack two days earlier. Both men—the first and second in
command, including the economic reformer who was most likely to lobby
for the OGAS Project—could not attend the fateful meeting because of cal-
endar contingencies.
Despite these key empty seats, the meeting began well enough. Without
Brezhnev and Kosygin in attendance, the meeting was conducted by the
Stalinist-era Mikhail Suslov, who was famous for resisting radical changes as
the “Chief Ideologue of the Communist Party” and a consummate behind-
the-scenes operator with seats on both the Secretariat and the Politburo.
Given this steely reputation, he began encouragingly by saying nothing
against the proposal. Glushkov was then invited to speak, which he did
briskly before responding to a series of questions to the apparent satisfac-
tion of all involved. This went on for less than half an hour, until several
higher-ups began to speak positively about the project. Baybakov, one of
Kosygin’s deputies, volunteered that if the Politiburo should make him
head of the State Planning Committee (Gosplan), he would eliminate or
merge three ministries so that staff could be found to support the OGAS
Project. In this deft maneuver, Baybakov managed to relay Kosygin’s enthu-
siasm and promote his own career. The Minister of Instrument Making,
Automated Equipment, and Control Systems (Minpribor), K. N. Rudnev,
had extolled the virtues of information technology in economic planning
in 1963, signed the document, and commented off the record that the
timing might be bad.^5 A chorus of voices countered these hesitations with
unambiguous support of OGAS.
Just as it seemed that the committee might be nearing consensus
approval, the minister of finance, Vasily Garbuzov, stood up. According to
Glushkov:
[Garbuzov] entered the stage and addressed Mazurov, Kosygin’s first assistant. He said
that, well, he went to Minsk as directed, to examine the poultry farms. At the so-and-
so farm, the workers designed a computing machine on their own. I laughed out loud.
He shook a finger at me and said, “You, Glushkov, shouldn’t laugh. We are discussing
a serious issue.” However, Suslov interrupted him: “Comrade Garbuzov, you are not
the chairman here, and it’s not up to you to control the proceedings of a Politburo
hearing.” He shrugged and self-confidently continued, “The machine can perform
three programs—turns on music when the hen lays an egg, turns lights on and off, and
so on. This increased egg production at the farm.” So he suggested that first we should
implement these machines at all the poultry farms in the Soviet Union and only then
could we even begin thinking about silly projects like a nation-wide system.^6