Talk:History of computing in the Soviet Union

Soviet Union Low‑importance

	Soviet Union portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Soviet Union, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Soviet UnionWikipedia:WikiProject Soviet UnionTemplate:WikiProject Soviet UnionSoviet Union
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Computing Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Computing, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of computers, computing, and information technology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ComputingWikipedia:WikiProject ComputingTemplate:WikiProject ComputingComputing
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Systems Low‑importance

	Systems science portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Systems, which collaborates on articles related to systems and systems science.SystemsWikipedia:WikiProject SystemsTemplate:WikiProject SystemsSystems
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is within the field of Systems.

Guild of Copy Editors

This article was copy edited by Miniapolis, a member of the Guild of Copy Editors, on 7 December 2017.Guild of Copy EditorsWikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy EditorsTemplate:WikiProject Guild of Copy EditorsGuild of Copy Editors

History of computing in the Soviet Union has been listed as one of the Engineering and technology good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Review: February 22, 2018. (Reviewed version).

Tip: Anchors are case-sensitive in most browsers.

This article links to one or more target anchors that no longer exist.

[[Konrad Zuse#The Z2, Z3, and Z4|Zuse Z4]] The anchor (#The Z2, Z3, and Z4) has been deleted by other users before.

Please help fix the broken anchors. You can remove this template after fixing the problems. | Reporting errors

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on History of computing in the Soviet Union. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20041216203725/http://www.bashedu.ru/konkurs/tarhov/ to http://www.bashedu.ru/konkurs/tarhov/
Added {{dead link}} tag to http://www.sigcis.org/?q=node%2F85%2F

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 16:29, 18 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:History of computing in the Soviet Union/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Rosguill (talk · contribs) 22:52, 25 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)
It is reasonably well written. a (prose, spelling, and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists): General structure is fine, but sections for individual eras could use additional subheaders, splitting individual milestones and trivia (like the invention of Tetris or the impounding of American chess software bound for Moscow) away from narrative sections describing the state of the industry It is factually accurate and verifiable. a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): Claims about the Ninth Five-Year-Plan are exclusively sourced to a Fortune.com piece with a clear ideological bone to pick and bases its assessments on a PhD dissertation. A brief look at the wikipedia page for the Ninth Five-Year-Plan would suggest that while the Plan faced general failures in implementation, the implementation of improvements in the computer technology sector was one of the few successful elements c (OR): d (copyvio and plagiarism): It is broad in its coverage. a (major aspects): b (focused): It follows the neutral point of view policy. Fair representation without bias: The appraisal section is of questionable neutrality. In particular, the claims from the Hudson Institute are extreme enough that they would appear to contradict the article as a whole, and the comparison to South Korea and Taiwan seems unfair. Additionally, Strayer's analysis is tautological--without specifying a causal mechanism, they blame the Soviet's command economy; this method of reasoning could be used to dismiss or affirm virtually any claim about Soviet industry and relies on pre-existing ideological perceptions of the desirability (or lack thereof) of non-market based economies. If nothing else, I would recommend reordering this section so that it leads with what is currently the second paragraph "Although soviet computer software..." It is stable. . No edit wars, etc.: It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate. a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
Overall: Good quality overall, but specific issues of sources and neutrality should be addressed. Some additional copyediting for the structure for history sections wouldn't be remiss either. Upon review and discussion below, the article was deemed to have passed. Pass/Fail:
· · ·

Hi Rosguill, thank you for taking the time to review the article.

1a: Agreed, I have removed such milestones until enough of them can be gathered for a separate section.

2b: The Fortune source has been replaced by Benjamin Peters' How Not to Network a Nation: it seems that a heavily simplified version of the original proposal was indeed implemented.

4: I still need to do any work on this section, but per capita incomes in the USSR in the early 80s were 85-90% of the Japanese level, and 2 to 3 times higher than South Korea and Taiwan, so I can't agree that the comparison is unfair.--eh bien mon prince (talk) 08:37, 27 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Noted for the SK and Taiwan comparison. Originally I had based the objection on disparities in foreign investment, not per capita income. That having been said, ultimately no comparison between countries is going to be perfect, so I suppose we can leave it in. Rosguill (talk) 18:13, 29 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Update about #4: I found two sources, one again lists the lack of market forces as the reason for decline; the other provides a more detailed breakdown but it is from those same Hudson researchers.--eh bien mon prince (talk) 21:00, 27 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Rosguill: Hi again! Let me know if further improvements are needed for the GA nomination. Cheers, --eh bien mon prince (talk) 12:53, 14 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, sorry for the delay. Looking over the article now, it appears to be in good shape and I will change the evaluation status to "pass"

Additional comments by Lingzhi

To check as many errors as possible in the references and/or notes, I recommend using User:Lingzhi/reviewsourcecheck in conjunction with two other scripts. You can install them as follows:

First, copy/paste importScript('User:Ucucha/HarvErrors.js'); to Special:MyPage/common.js .
On the same page and below that script add importScript('User:Lingzhi/reviewsourcecheck.js');. Save that page.
Finally go to to Special:MyPage/common.css and add .citation-comment {display: inline !important;} /* show all Citation Style 1 error messages */.

When you've added all those, go to an article to check for various messages in its notes and references. (You may need to clear your browser's cache first). The output of User:Lingzhi/reviewsourcecheck is not foolproof and can be verbose. Use common sense when interpreting output (especially with respect to sorting errors). Reading the explanatory page will help more than a little. The least urgent message of all is probably Missing archive link; archiving weblinks is good practice but lack of archiving will probably not be mentioned in any content review. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 04:07, 16 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comment

I think that this page could do with some expansion around the (saratov - capatob) system.

I own the front panel from one of these systems and have done a little research on the equipment (vs PDP8).

It seems strange that no mention of this computer. If that one - which I know about - is missing, what else is missing?

I dont know enough about the technicals nor the science/political to make any comments. All I can supply are photographs! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Iainmaoileoin (talk • contribs) 15:44, 25 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The Soviet Union under Stalin opposed cybernetics, not computing

Stalin did not oppose computing, he opposed cybernetics, which are two distinct things. Cybernetics, on the one hand, seeks to analyze the universe as a large system containing many smaller machine-like systems (really, it is a metaphysical philosophy). Cybernetics was seen as pseudo-scientific, while on the other hand computing was seen as a useful tool and was supported by the Stalin administration and the press. The provided source for the claim that Stalin "considered the computer an evil product of capitalism" is just an American computing newspaper, which does not support its claim in any way, and which cannot be considered an expert source on the politics of the Soviet Union.

The following quote from anti-communist David Holloway indicates the falsehood of the claim that the USSR under Stalin opposed or suppressed computing:

“In 1960 Academician Berg wrote that ‘it took such a long time to form a sensible attitude to cybernetics that undoubted harm was done to our science and technology ‘… Berg had referred to the way in which the fears of philosophers had held up the development of computer technology; but, as has been mentioned, computer technology was exempted from the initial attacks on cybernetics. In 1949 the first department of Computer Mathematics in the Soviet Union had been set up at Moscow University, and in the following year the Academy of Sciences established an Institute of Precision Mechanics and Computer Engineering. Work on digital computers had begun in the late 1940s, and by 1953 several different computers had been completed.” (David Holloway, Innovation in Science-The Case of Cybernetics in the Soviet Union, p. 312) 132.160.49.90 (talk) 01:17, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]