Asianometry
1 HN recommender · recommended in 3 months, 2022–2024
18:57 · 4.2M views · Jul 7, 2022
An Asianometry explainer on why the Soviet Union, once a leading computing power, fell far behind the US in computers by the 1980s. It traces the gap from the 1960s onward despite strong state support for science.
HN commenters cite it as a concise answer to why Soviet computing failed, including reliance on reverse engineering and bureaucracy.
3 comments from Hacker News
> The Soviet Union couldn't compete on the development of computers, because the USSR was trying to optimize towards what could computers be used for then and there. There was a great video on this: this video Asianometry - "Why the Soviet Computer Failed" (18m56s) [2022-07-07]
> > moving back towards an inefficient state controlled economy > Didn't the Soviets go from agrarian to superpower and give the US a merry chase before collapsing? This might be a long arc. The source for their leap "from agrarian to superpower" came from the satellite states that they had in control, and their usage of 5 year plans to accelerate growth of their heavy industries, at the sacrifice of growth in consumer-oriented industries. Nationally, the USSR was able to catch up quickly to the US after WWII, and likewise pull off some punches to publicly show their superiority in certain fields: - Internal political resistance to the transistor & computer tech in general made them laggards when it came to alleviating bureaucratic inefficiencies. They were initially on good paces to catch up technologically with the US, but their reliance on reverse engineering & not building up their own advancements meant that the gap would inevitably widen as they'd always be playing catch up to the Western space. this video [LINK] - The lack of development into the consumer-oriented industries compared to the Western sphere in general made the economies of the USSR reliant on the State to shoulder that burden, making them penultimately responsible for placating the wants of the USSR citizens. - The below-market oil transfer agreements made to keep the USSR sphere of influence together (CMEA/Comecon) came under strain as the USSR was unable to keep growth in their oil production/exports at a
Asianometry also has a video "Why the Soviet Computer Failed" [0]. If the Soviet Union had excellent higher education, why was/is Communism and then corruption/organized crime an issue? At what point do phds, engineers, etc take responsibility for the society in which they live? When do the smart people say "we have met the enemy and he is us?" [1] 0. this video 1. [LINK] From the video description: In 1986, the Soviet Union had slightly more than 10,000 computers. The Americans had 1.3 million. At the time of Stalin's death, the Soviet Union was the world's third most proficient computing power. But by the 1960s, the US-Soviet computing gap was already years long. Twenty years later, the gap was undeniable and basically permanent. Why did this happen? The Soviet state believed in science and industrial modernization. Support for research & development and the hard sciences were plentiful. They had the country’s finest minds. Goodness gracious, they launched Sputnik! They landed on Venus! How did it come to this?