We are on our journey towards the cybernation of the soviet economy. Let’s start our efforts with a grand proposal: that of Colonel Anatoly Kitov, military computation manager, computer engineer, and visionary. His suggestion was to link all major hubs of socialist production & management, some of which already contained computer systems, by a single network.
The kickoff meeting is the first breath of life for a new project. It is the first meeting with the client, where goals, constraints, general solution vectors, and timelines are set. How you present your project and its intended profits will define expectations. It is not a pitch — we assume the client is already familiar with your general plan and is interested. You are not here to market, but you are here to persuade.
So how did Kitov articulate his plan? He made four bold choices:
1. He defined the bureaucracy as part of the problem. An estimated 3 million clerks, managers, and inspectors were part of the union’s vast economic administration. Their replacement would undoubtedly save grand sums, so much so that the ROI was estimated as 100% over two years.
2. By removing the biological limitations on data processing, planning could be instantaneous and centralized. This would require simultaneous implementation; displaying the entire dataset could only be as fast as its slowest component.
3. The project would require enormous infrastructural change: both in raw computing power, and in radically improved communication grid. To help this great expense sound worthwhile, Kitov capitalized on his military knowledge: missile defense systems also required rapid communication and vast computation. But they only needed those in times of foreign attack. Therefore, these computer centers could be used during peacetime for economic calculation, while justifying their cost by serving as defense mechanisms in war.
4. The client to whom Kitov turned was Khrushchev himself. By going directly to the biggest stakeholder Kitov could discuss all the grand aspects of his project, and also criticize current military computer use and doctrine.
Now, how do we analyze this project start?
First, the plan has plenty of merits. This grand program elucidates the overall potential for managerial scientification and control; It answers the client’s wish to better direct the economy according to changing goals and helps overcome the ever-present bribery and paralysis. It creates a platform for defining precise and individual objectives and incentives for particular producers. The world after its implementation sounds divine. However…
The client’s needs were misidentified. Yes, frugality appealed to the soviet budgeteer; but any head of state knows that his governance system is his backbone. Threatening them would be political suicide. Yet, there is an apparent tension between achieving the project goal of expenditure reduction and keeping the client otherwise satisfied.
What could’ve been done differently? This project itself would require great bureaucratic handling, both in its deployment and in gathering all the organizational useful hacks and secrets. The cybernetic system would still have human users, at the very least for inputting information or working by CAD/CAM. By stressing the possibility of promoting some clerks to working on the cybernetic project, and threatening the rest with replacement by computers, Kitov could offer the leadership an effective carrot-and-stick to motivate change, without fostering general dismissal-panic.
Kitov’s dual-use proposal for the infrastructure was indeed a stroke of PM genius. However, this makes the defense establishment a key stakeholder. By going over their head and criticizing their practice from within, Kitov alienated his other major partner in the project to come. Had the project been green-lit, he would have faced resistance and hostility from this sector. By failing to include them, Kitov also missed the opportunity to address their concerns about the project: regarding the reliability of a technical apparatus that is regularly given over to civilian use, and concerning their possible share of blame should economic managing remain unsatisfactory.
But for a modern PM the following flaw should be most glaring: the project was presented as all-or-nothing. This means no iterations, no cheap pivots, and no flexibility. Yes, the infrastructure itself cannot really be planned flexibly or independently. However, the project includes huge user-facing interfaces, which would have been brand new. Data entry has never happened digitally at this scale. Profit would be reaped only after total conversion, or at least so it was presented. For an ambitious cyberneticist this would be a method of ensuring the realization of his vision, thus avoiding ravenous compromise. However, one must remember that all-or-nothing can mean, sometimes, nothing…
The reception of this proposal was catastrophic, primarily for Kitov himself. Kitov lost his position, his party membership, and his uniform. Why? An unhelpful answer would be “because of politics”. Yet we have to explain why those politics worked against, instead of with, him. There is no project, governmental or private, without politics. PM Kitov, you have failed. Perhaps your colleague would do better? We shall explore that in our next episode.
Next Chapter: Marxism-Leninism-Agilism
During the writing of this post I have used material from:
Pioneers of Soviet Computing. A book by Boris Nikolaevich Malinovsky.
The Main Computer Center of the USSR State Planning Committee. A paper by Vladimir Kitov and Nikolay Krotov.
Anatoly Kitov: Technology vs Ideology. A paper by Vladimir A. Kitov and Valery V. Shilov.
InterNyet: Why the Soviet Union did not build a nationwide computer network. An article by Slava Gerovitch.
