The birth of the Soviet missile defense system. This was not the case under Stalin.
Soviet Game of Thrones
In the same way, the Khrushchev era had its main scarecrows: the US nuclear submarine fleet and ballistic missiles.
These challenges had to be answered, in 1953 the development of a missile defense system started, in 1955 the first Soviet hydrogen bomb was tested, and a couple of years later the first Soviet R-7 ICBM was launched and the first Leninsky Komsomol nuclear submarine was put into operation.
By 1961, a missile defense prototype had been created, and delighted like a child, Khrushchev began to threaten the Americans, initiating the Berlin and Caribbean crises.
After their successful resolution, the Yankees realize that the USSR has reached a technological level at which war becomes suicidal, and from that moment on, plans to attack the Union itself were never seriously considered.
Both countries have moved into proxy wars from Nicaragua to Laos, and their own doctrines have turned into containment policies.
Khrushchev fulfilled his role - he saved the USSR from the horror of total war that had weighed on since Operation Dropshot, but it turned out sideways for him.
Immediately after the beginning of the first détente in relations with the United States, top party officials lose their fear completely. Khrushchev did not suit the partocrats very much - violent, rude, aggressive, always confused by reforms and reshuffles, not all of which were successful.
By the end of Khrushchev's reign, his main projects - from the development of virgin lands to the housing construction program - stalled, the people began to grumble. And how everyone got tired of his beloved Lysenko, because of which (and in general an absolutely childish understanding of science) Khrushchev lost the support of academicians.
As a result, the Politburo decided that it was enough to overstrain on the construction of mythical communism and endure the rudeness of the leader, it's time to live for your own pleasure.
In 1964, Khrushchev was summoned to Moscow, where it was popularly explained to him that he, it turns out, was tired and was leaving.
The era of Brezhnev came - the legendary stagnation, for almost 20 years, during which the USSR slowly decayed, in order to turn into a living corpse by the 1980s.
It was during this period that a kind of game of thrones flourished in high politics - a sluggish struggle between various ruling clans.
The clans accompanied the USSR at all stages of its existence, but flourished most of all in the era of stagnation.
They were formed according to three main features - geographical (Leningrad, Moscow, Donetsk, Dnepropetrovsk), national (Georgian, Armenian, Uzbek, Azerbaijani) and administrative (clans of the KGB, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the USSR Academy of Sciences, various ministries).
The most interesting for us are the dismantling of various Soviet ministries. As we remember, Khrushchev reformed the Academy, distributing research institutes, laboratories and research centers to all ministries and allowing them to be combined at his own discretion.
As a result, high-tech ministries such as the MEP and the MRP have become, in fact, monstrous and ugly corporations in the Soviet style.
In a traditional economy, the arbitrariness of production is limited to feedback from consumers through the market. Naturally, there are no distortions, however, in general, the scheme has been working successfully since the time of Adam Smith.
No less natural is the fact that under socialism this scheme is impossible. The whole essence of a planned economy is that the consumer is stupid, and without the help of the state that controls everything in the world, he will not figure out exactly what and in what quantities he needs, including toilet paper.
As a result, a separate parasitic layer of party officials arises between the corporation (that is, the ministry) and consumers (for example, the army), who order, accept and pay for the product, but do not use it themselves.
A little later, we will return to this topic when we discuss how the military tried to sell the A-1973T missile defense system in 35 (do not confuse it with the A-35M, very little is known about the T project in general).
There, the generals and colonels literally shoved away with their boots from the military-industrial complex officials (cleverly getting hold of the Decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR), who, without even asking their opinion, already climbed to allocate money and managed to thump several million into the unknown before the scandal reached the level when at a meeting at 4 -m GU MO his chief is Colonel General aviation G. F. Baidukov yelled at the representatives of the party:
You don't know how to work. Beria needs you with a stick!
According to the memoirs of Colonel N. D. Drozdov (deputy head of the 5th department of NII-2 of the USSR Ministry of Defense, member of the military subcommittee of the factory commission for testing the A-35 missile defense system), after such a demarche, the representatives of the Council of Ministers were left speechless, and then the meeting was quietly curtailed on a minor note, the A-35T project was rejected.
And how many such projects were successfully pushed through and continued until the collapse of the Union for decades?
ABM became especially famous for this, because the money was spinning there, as we mentioned in the first article, bоmore than the Union allocated to the rest of the military-industrial complex combined, and the veil of wild secrecy made it possible to turn anything at all without the slightest control.
Take, for example, the insane Terra-3 project, which, long before all those Reagan Star Wars, was supposed to shoot down satellites and missiles with lasers. It began in the mid-1960s, in fact, shortly after the discovery of the laser technology itself, but by the early 1970s it became clear that Terra-3 would never work.
Do you think the project was cancelled?
Yeah, now, you don't know the USSR well.
The project managers became hostages of bureaucratic procedures and the scientific and industrial base that served itself and by that time had already developed according to its own logic - the fact is that since the start of work on the project, an increasing number of institutions and structures have been involved in it, each of which was interested in continuing the project in one form or another, since it provided them with a stable workload and employment for their staff, and, as P.V. Zarubin notes, this whole flywheel continued to spin and could not be stopped at once. For a long time, neither scientists, nor designers, nor military customers dared to recognize directly the impracticability of the task at hand at the existing level of material and technical base.
An important factor was the aspect of family ties, since in 1978 the post of general designer, and then director of the head institution for the work on the Terra-3 project, was taken by N. D. Ustinov, the son of the head of the entire military-industrial complex, USSR Minister of Defense Marshal Ustinov.
But the work had been going on for more than ten years, and the creation of a laser missile defense system seemed to be postponed further and further. Despite the fact that the Terra-3 program was in crisis, it continued to be financed, a special enterprise was created for its needs, the production base developed, dozens of enterprises and institutions worked directly or indirectly in its interests.
In the meantime, the sense of dead-end work gradually moved beyond the circle of developers and spread to the management.
An important factor was the aspect of family ties, since in 1978 the post of general designer, and then director of the head institution for the work on the Terra-3 project, was taken by N. D. Ustinov, the son of the head of the entire military-industrial complex, USSR Minister of Defense Marshal Ustinov.
But the work had been going on for more than ten years, and the creation of a laser missile defense system seemed to be postponed further and further. Despite the fact that the Terra-3 program was in crisis, it continued to be financed, a special enterprise was created for its needs, the production base developed, dozens of enterprises and institutions worked directly or indirectly in its interests.
In the meantime, the sense of dead-end work gradually moved beyond the circle of developers and spread to the management.
As a result, on the "Terra" alone, the military-industrial complex sawed tens of millions of rubles until the collapse of the USSR.
By the way, the vice-president of the USSR Academy of Sciences E. P. Velikhov himself was the scientific director of "Terra".
At the same time, even inside the ministries, no one was embarrassed to use money for a huge number of parallel and useless projects.
In 1984, the exhibition "Computers in the Soviet Army" was held in Moscow.
Naturally, I came.
More than 200 types of computers were presented there, not counting small splashes.
And what is 200 computers?
These are 200 operating systems, 200 sets of spare parts and equipment…
I spoke several times in the defense department of the Central Committee of the CPSU in Moscow: "Let's make one car." “Andrey, don’t interfere,” they answered me politely but firmly. There was "Bronya" - the base telephone station of the Soviet army. It has three different cars. One for switching, the other for network management, the third for working with the operator. With different command systems, with different operating systems, three sets of officers need to be served.
A thousand numbers in all - a small station!
Three computers - where does it fit?
And when I tried to swear, they told me again: don’t interfere.”
Naturally, I came.
More than 200 types of computers were presented there, not counting small splashes.
And what is 200 computers?
These are 200 operating systems, 200 sets of spare parts and equipment…
I spoke several times in the defense department of the Central Committee of the CPSU in Moscow: "Let's make one car." “Andrey, don’t interfere,” they answered me politely but firmly. There was "Bronya" - the base telephone station of the Soviet army. It has three different cars. One for switching, the other for network management, the third for working with the operator. With different command systems, with different operating systems, three sets of officers need to be served.
A thousand numbers in all - a small station!
Three computers - where does it fit?
And when I tried to swear, they told me again: don’t interfere.”
- recalled the head of the Department of System Programming of Mathematics at St. Petersburg State University, Professor, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences. A. N. Terekhov in 2019.
A single system, you say?
Displaced, you say, and killed all domestic ingenious independent computer developments?
No, haven't heard of this one.
Another difference between the classical economy and the Soviet one was that employees could leave any corporation and try their luck in their business.
This is how all US microelectronics was born - first, the "treacherous eight" fled to Fairchild Semiconductor from their boss Shockley (a despot in the best traditions of Soviet ministers), then Fairchild literally exploded, giving birth to Intel, AMD and about a dozen smaller companies.
There was nowhere to escape from the Soviet ministry - formally, one could only go to another research institute, under the control of another similar tyrant in the same system and work according to the same rules.
And yes, when they say that this did not happen under Stalin, here the Stalinists turn out to be partially right: this really did not happen under him.
The fact is that after the war, Stalin was rigidly held by the horror of the quite possible potential destruction of the entire USSR.
In the United States, a huge number of people from the highest echelons of power looked with sympathy at Curtis LeMay, who offered to go ahead and bomb the Union in the Stone Age until he got his own bomb.
Firstly, the world obviously did not like Stalin's expansion - having captured half of Europe, he continued to muddy the waters in the Middle East (Iranian crisis, an attempt to revise the Montreux Convention a little in his favor, etc.). It was obvious that Stalin would not stop with kindness.
Secondly, many very influential people in American politics and science, such as von Neumann, were fierce ideological anti-communists.
If you say why not bomb [the Soviets] tomorrow, I say, why not today. If you say today at five o'clock, I say why not one o'clock.
This is perhaps the best quote of a brilliant scientist, describing all his love for communism (although, perhaps, it is only attributed to him, since it was published after his death).
It is not surprising that in such conditions the development of nuclear weapons and anti-aircraft missile systems were a matter of life and death for Stalin, it is no wonder that he made peace with scientists and gave them the anniversary of the Academy, removed all ideological oppression (“there will be no theory of relativity and quantum physics - there will be no bomb!”) And dispersed “ red professors.
However, to those who fundamentally did not want to make weapons, Stalin was harsh.
Kapitsa refused (the only one of the top Soviet physicists) to participate in a nuclear project, after which he was immediately kicked out of all posts and practically sent into exile.
One of a dozen plans to defeat the USSR that appeared in 1945-1950. Lauris Norstad to Leslie Groves, Atomic Bomb Production (15 September 1945), Correspondence (Top Secret) of the Manhattan Engineer District, 1942–1946, microfilm publication M1109 (Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration, 1980)
In 1948, Curtis LeMay became head of the US Air Force Strategic Command and began to develop plans for the physical destruction of the Union.
LeMay was a genius, a maniac, and a military sociopath who spent ten years leading the world to a full-fledged nuclear war. During his command, more than 25 tough provocations were initiated with the invasion of the airspace of the USSR, and it often came to a full-fledged air battle.
Colonel Harold Austin recalled how LeMay told him before flying out in May 1954:
Well, maybe if we do this overflight right, we can get World War III started.
Then the pilot took it as a joke, but many years later, after Lemay's resignation, Austin met with him again and he said:
Well, we'd have been a hell of a lot better off if we'd got World War III started in those days.
In 1962, Lemay, being the chief of staff of the Air Force, demanded an immediate invasion of Cuba, no matter what it turned out to be, up to an exchange of nuclear strikes with the USSR.
In general, it is no coincidence that he is considered one of the possible prototypes of the half-witted patriot, sociopath and paranoid General Potroshilling from Stanley Kubrick's film "Dr.
Soviet ...
...and American propaganda mostly from the 1950s
(photo https://propagandahistory.ru)
(photo https://propagandahistory.ru)
As we can see, the development of Soviet science and technology (naturally, primarily military technology) under Stalin and Khrushchev was dictated by vital necessity.
In fact, the fifties were a time of terrible paranoia (first US Secretary of Defense James Forrestal, before leaving the window of the 16th floor, repeated in delirium "The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming. They are everywhere. I saw Russian soldiers!"), when the world many times teetered on a knife edge and nearly tumbled into a natural Fallout.
Without Soviet computers, the nuclear (more precisely, thermonuclear) triad and air defense / missile defense systems, which were either created or were just beginning to be created by the 1960s, the third world could become absolutely real.
For pedants, we note that, in addition to the bomb, the means of its delivery were also important.
In 1945, no country in the world had bombers comparable to the American B-29s, and there might not have been any further, but fate presented Stalin with a royal gift.
In 1944, as many as 4 Superfortresses turned out to be on the territory of the USSR, reaching the border after the bombing of Japan.
The planes were literally dismantled to the last screw, carefully measured and studied, and in the shortest possible time their Tu-4 clone appeared (in the process they almost went crazy from the need to adjust everything to the metric system and from the monstrous complexity of the unique onboard weapons - remotely controlled Sperry turrets , which we already wrote about in the article about cybernetics).
Such exercises were carried out in American schools throughout the 1950s and contributed to the growth of panic
(photo https://propagandahistory.ru)
(photo https://propagandahistory.ru)
Discharge
What has changed with the advent of Brezhnev?
Yes, in general, everyone - both the USSR and the USA.
In the same year, when Brezhnev ousted Khrushchev, another well-known maniac died - MacArthur, who called for the destruction of China with nuclear weapons during the Korean War, and at the same time Lemey was finally kicked out of retirement, and von Neumann died of cancer back in 1957. Gone is the last generation of people who sincerely dreamed of war with all their hearts (moreover, the Americans here many times surpassed the Soviets in dreams).
In the same year, Kosygin's reform began, coinciding with the discovery of the seventh largest oil field in the world - Samotlor. Petrodollars poured into the country. Even under Khrushchev, as the Volga-Ural oil and gas province was developed in the 1950s, oil export figures began to grow. In 1955, oil production was 70,8 million tons, and by 1965 it was already 241,7 million tons.
In the late 1950s, a fundamental restructuring of the structure of Soviet oil exports also took place: if before 1960 the supply of petroleum products prevailed, then after that it was already crude oil.
After the energy crisis of 1973, the USSR rapidly increased the volume of oil exports to Western countries, which, unlike their allies in the socialist camp, paid in freely convertible currency.
From 1970 to 1980, this figure increased by 1,5 times - from 44 to 63,6 million tons. Five years later, it reached 80,7 million tons. And all this against the backdrop of rapidly rising oil prices.
The volume of foreign exchange earnings of the USSR from oil exports is amazing. If in 1970 the revenue of the USSR was 1,05 billion dollars, then in 1975 it was already 3,72 billion dollars, and by 1980 it had increased to 15,74 billion dollars.
On both sides of the ocean, everyone played enough in the war and realized that it was much more profitable to trade.
As a result, from the mid-1960s, all military developments of the USSR began to slip (we will talk about this in more detail in the final part, dedicated specifically to the fate of the A-35/135).
Together with them, computer developments also begin to slip.
Stalin was terrified of the possible destruction of the country (and his power), Khrushchev was afraid, by the time of Brezhnev only fears remained.
That is why 1972 was a turning point, both for Soviet supercomputers and for their most important application - the missile defense system.
At this time, the Americans decided to stop cutting budgets at home, too, and offered to tie up with threats to each other already officially.
The USSR gladly agreed, and since 1971, in fact, even a formally working result has ceased to be required from our corporations-ministries. From now on, it was possible to safely share goodies - scientific degrees, titles, awards and prizes (as well as cottages and cars) without any need to do at least something real.
As we remember, the ministries acquired their research institutes, design bureaus and laboratories as early as 1961, as a result of which numerous scientists also joined the battle for sawing in the Soviet way.
1965-1991 is the time when (in two steps) the main scientific and technical scam of the USSR (and the most expensive one) took place - an attempt to create a working missile defense system (and not a prototype, like System A) and computers for it.
At the first stage (1965–1975), the Ministry of Radio Industry fought with the Ministry of Defense for funding developments under the MKSK Argun (A-351) project. On the part of the Moscow Region, Kisunko and his group spoke, on the part of the Ministry of Radio Industry - Mints, Raspletin and Kalmykov.
ABM is missiles plus radars, plus computers. Design bureaus for missiles at the Ministry of Defense, of course, were found, not even one, at the very least they also organized for radars, but there was an ambush from the computer.
The Moscow Region, having once short-sightedly dispersed Kitov's team, planted an excellent pig on itself - there was no one to assemble a computer for missile defense, they did not have a single specialized research institute left.
As a result, it was necessary to bow to the Ministry of Economic Development or ... to the Ministry of Radio Industry itself!
It's easy to guess how it all ended.
In 1971, the Ministry of Radio Industry created (taking advantage of the freedom recklessly granted by Khrushchev) TsNPO Vympel, monopoly responsible for all R&D in the framework of air defense / missile defense in the country, Deputy Minister Kalmykova V. I. Markov became its director.
Immediately, he, as a deputy minister, orders the director of the TsNPO to stop allocating funds for 5E53 Yuditsky, and himself, as a director, conscientiously fulfills his order (the SVTs belonged to the MEP, not the MRP, Kalmykov could not command it, but could simply cut off their funding by withdrawing order for the development of computers).
It was even easier with Kartsev, he was in the structure of the MRP, as a result, he was simply removed from the board and put in a corner, where his brilliant developments gathered dust until his death.
Let's see who could take on the PRO supercomputer. There was Burtsev, who, together with the entire ITMiVT, since 1961 belonged with giblets ... to the Ministry of Radio Industry.
As a result of this intrigue, the Ministry of Defense, as they say, arrived - their developer Kisunko was left without a super-computer, flunked all the deadlines, A-351 was canceled, A-35 did not really work, and in 1975 Kisunko was expelled from all posts, and the development of missile defense by the forces of the Ministry of Defense completely stopped.
So the second stage came - 1975-1991, when the MCI had an absolute monopoly for its own pleasure by mastering the unimaginable, monstrous (as we remember, one Elbrus project was equal to three nuclear submarines, and besides Elbrus, there were so many things ... ) budgets for the creation of their personally proprietary A-135 system and computers for it.
In order to have a larger budget, all other developments were put into consumption.
In 1974, Lebedev, the main icon of Soviet informatics, died, and, taking advantage of this, Burtsev nailed all the projects of his scientific "brother", the second Lebedev's student Melnikov, and squeezed him out of the MCI into the MEP.
When in 1984 the death among party gerontocrats begins (Ustinov, Andropov die, followed by Chernenko), it becomes clear that in a few years the country will end, and everything will finally slide into a monstrous cut of the last budgets.
Even the Armenians joined the celebration of life, rolling out the development of their original matrix supercomputer, and in general there were 15 such projects in the late USSR, and the most intelligent of them were either strictly local and did not affect anything (MARS and Kronos, Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences) , or were covered up (Glushkov's macropipeline), or degenerated into budget sinks (LIAP's recursive machine).
And what fun was going on at that time at the Academy ...
The mathematician Pontryagin recalls:
Melnikov was known as an outstanding designer of electronic computers. Before the 1976 elections, he worked at the Institute of Fine Mechanics and Computer Technology and had a complex and difficult relationship with the director of the institute, Burtsev, who harassed him in every possible way.
Vacancies in computer technology were to be provided by the Department of Mechanics and Control Problems. This Department would have chosen Melnikov. However, he was not even nominated there.
And his oppressor - the director of the institute - Burtsev was nominated.
I thought it was extremely unfair and harmful.
From the employees of the Burtsev Institute, it was known that our computer technology was in a hopelessly backward position.
Yes, I knew it myself. It can be corrected only by the works of Melnikov.
For many years, Burtsev has been promising his superiors a certain giant (a computer), but the designers do not see the end of this work and fear that they will not see it at all.
"Hack and cheat, cheat and cheat" - they say from year to year. One designer, telling this to Alexandra Ignatievna and me, wept.
If Burtsev had been chosen, but Melnikov had not, then, as one of the famous mathematicians said, Burtsev would have rubbed Melnikov like a snot.
Alexandra Ignatievna and I hardly slept for several nights, and I decided to at least make a scandal before the elections about the outrage that was taking place.
Traditionally, on the eve of the election, the President arranges tea for each Section. And in a not very official setting, all nominated candidates are discussed.
I decided to use this tea on our Branch.
When the candidacies of corresponding members were discussed, and the corresponding members left, and only academicians remained, I said that we, members of the Department of Mathematics, as a whole do not often meet with the President, and therefore I want to raise a question here that is not directly related to our Branch, but very important, in my opinion.
Disgrace happens - our best specialist in computer technology, V. A. Melnikov, is not among those nominated for election. Something needs to be done to give him the opportunity to run.
President A.P. Aleksandrov answered me that nothing could be done, that Melnikov's election would have to be postponed for two years.
For my part, I proposed to postpone the election of candidates for computer technology, which is so necessary for the country, for two months in order to figure out who we are choosing for the Academy!
I began to insist and declared that if the Presidium did nothing, or rather did not want to do it, it would become an indelible stain on it.
Vice President Ovchinnikov attacked me.
I stated that I would not limit myself to considering this issue here, but would raise it at the General Meeting of the Academy and go even further.
I was supported by Keldysh and some other academicians of our Department. The whole discussion was in the highest emotional intensity. I was furious! All members of the Presidium, it seems, too.
The president, perhaps fearing a serious scandal, suddenly said: “All right, we will allow Melnikov to run for elections. Let him submit the documents.
Then I turned to the President and told him: “Anatoly Petrovich, hold a vote so that Melnikov is nominated by our assembly. Now, here!”
This was done, and Melnikov received the unanimous support of all the assembled academicians of our Department. So in the future he was considered put forward by this meeting.
<….>
Faddeev promised me, but Prokhorov's position was unclear. At the elections themselves, Yu. V. Prokhorov made some strange confused speech in which he declared that he would vote for Novikov only when he saw that it was his vote that was missing. In fact, he voted immediately.
In addition, I was worried about the fate of Melnikov.
For some reason, I was not at the meeting of the expert commission, but I was told that Tikhonov and Dorodnitsyn opposed Melnikov there.
The position of these two academicians in this case aroused in me a feeling of hostility. It would seem that they should worry about our computer technology: Dorodnitsyn is the director of the Computing Center of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Tikhonov is the director of the Institute of Applied Mathematics of the USSR Academy of Sciences. But at the President's tea, where I was, Dorodnitsyn was absent, and Tikhonov spoke out against Melnikov, allegedly for formal reasons, pointing out that we have no places in computer science, and Melnikov is not an applied mathematician, so he can only be elected as pure mathematics. In addition, he pointed out that there were already many promises in computing to make machines that were not being fulfilled.
In response to Tikhonov, I said that we should not be guided by formal considerations, and our main goal is the good of the cause! Of course, Melnikov will undoubtedly be useful for the cause! As for unfulfilled promises, they were given not by Melnikov, but by Burtsev. He did not fulfill his promises, he only promised.
<….>
Long before the elections, it was not clear whether Academician Glushkov would be able to take part in the vote. He was seriously ill and was in Kiev. Before the elections, he was transferred to a Moscow hospital on the grounds that he could get more help here.
In fact, in order to make his participation in the elections possible.
In the end, by decision of the Presidium, which acted on the basis of medical considerations transmitted from the hospital, it was recognized that Glushkov could not vote. And at the very beginning of the meeting of our Department, dedicated to the election of academicians, Dorodnitsyn suddenly announced that Glushkov had been illegally removed from the elections. Dorodnitsyn asks the Department to instruct him to go to Glushkov in the hospital with a bulletin. Dorodnitsyn insisted on this very much.
In this regard, Academician-Secretary Bogolyubov had to hold difficult negotiations regarding Glushkov's health. The answer from the hospital was the same: Glushkov cannot participate in the elections, as he is in an unconscious state, in agony.
Glushkov's participation in the elections could prevent the election of Melnikov and Novikov! To fail Novikov and Melnikov was the main goal of Dorodnitsyn and Tikhonov!
<….>
The monstrous intention of Dorodnitsyn to use the voice of the dying Glushkov and other methods of his behavior in these elections led to the fact that Alexandra Ignatievna and Dorodnitsyn had a very unpleasant collision in the corridor. But she doesn't want me to describe it.
Other elections, I think, were no less difficult, but I have already forgotten about it.
Vacancies in computer technology were to be provided by the Department of Mechanics and Control Problems. This Department would have chosen Melnikov. However, he was not even nominated there.
And his oppressor - the director of the institute - Burtsev was nominated.
I thought it was extremely unfair and harmful.
From the employees of the Burtsev Institute, it was known that our computer technology was in a hopelessly backward position.
Yes, I knew it myself. It can be corrected only by the works of Melnikov.
For many years, Burtsev has been promising his superiors a certain giant (a computer), but the designers do not see the end of this work and fear that they will not see it at all.
"Hack and cheat, cheat and cheat" - they say from year to year. One designer, telling this to Alexandra Ignatievna and me, wept.
If Burtsev had been chosen, but Melnikov had not, then, as one of the famous mathematicians said, Burtsev would have rubbed Melnikov like a snot.
Alexandra Ignatievna and I hardly slept for several nights, and I decided to at least make a scandal before the elections about the outrage that was taking place.
Traditionally, on the eve of the election, the President arranges tea for each Section. And in a not very official setting, all nominated candidates are discussed.
I decided to use this tea on our Branch.
When the candidacies of corresponding members were discussed, and the corresponding members left, and only academicians remained, I said that we, members of the Department of Mathematics, as a whole do not often meet with the President, and therefore I want to raise a question here that is not directly related to our Branch, but very important, in my opinion.
Disgrace happens - our best specialist in computer technology, V. A. Melnikov, is not among those nominated for election. Something needs to be done to give him the opportunity to run.
President A.P. Aleksandrov answered me that nothing could be done, that Melnikov's election would have to be postponed for two years.
For my part, I proposed to postpone the election of candidates for computer technology, which is so necessary for the country, for two months in order to figure out who we are choosing for the Academy!
I began to insist and declared that if the Presidium did nothing, or rather did not want to do it, it would become an indelible stain on it.
Vice President Ovchinnikov attacked me.
I stated that I would not limit myself to considering this issue here, but would raise it at the General Meeting of the Academy and go even further.
I was supported by Keldysh and some other academicians of our Department. The whole discussion was in the highest emotional intensity. I was furious! All members of the Presidium, it seems, too.
The president, perhaps fearing a serious scandal, suddenly said: “All right, we will allow Melnikov to run for elections. Let him submit the documents.
Then I turned to the President and told him: “Anatoly Petrovich, hold a vote so that Melnikov is nominated by our assembly. Now, here!”
This was done, and Melnikov received the unanimous support of all the assembled academicians of our Department. So in the future he was considered put forward by this meeting.
<….>
Faddeev promised me, but Prokhorov's position was unclear. At the elections themselves, Yu. V. Prokhorov made some strange confused speech in which he declared that he would vote for Novikov only when he saw that it was his vote that was missing. In fact, he voted immediately.
In addition, I was worried about the fate of Melnikov.
For some reason, I was not at the meeting of the expert commission, but I was told that Tikhonov and Dorodnitsyn opposed Melnikov there.
The position of these two academicians in this case aroused in me a feeling of hostility. It would seem that they should worry about our computer technology: Dorodnitsyn is the director of the Computing Center of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Tikhonov is the director of the Institute of Applied Mathematics of the USSR Academy of Sciences. But at the President's tea, where I was, Dorodnitsyn was absent, and Tikhonov spoke out against Melnikov, allegedly for formal reasons, pointing out that we have no places in computer science, and Melnikov is not an applied mathematician, so he can only be elected as pure mathematics. In addition, he pointed out that there were already many promises in computing to make machines that were not being fulfilled.
In response to Tikhonov, I said that we should not be guided by formal considerations, and our main goal is the good of the cause! Of course, Melnikov will undoubtedly be useful for the cause! As for unfulfilled promises, they were given not by Melnikov, but by Burtsev. He did not fulfill his promises, he only promised.
<….>
Long before the elections, it was not clear whether Academician Glushkov would be able to take part in the vote. He was seriously ill and was in Kiev. Before the elections, he was transferred to a Moscow hospital on the grounds that he could get more help here.
In fact, in order to make his participation in the elections possible.
In the end, by decision of the Presidium, which acted on the basis of medical considerations transmitted from the hospital, it was recognized that Glushkov could not vote. And at the very beginning of the meeting of our Department, dedicated to the election of academicians, Dorodnitsyn suddenly announced that Glushkov had been illegally removed from the elections. Dorodnitsyn asks the Department to instruct him to go to Glushkov in the hospital with a bulletin. Dorodnitsyn insisted on this very much.
In this regard, Academician-Secretary Bogolyubov had to hold difficult negotiations regarding Glushkov's health. The answer from the hospital was the same: Glushkov cannot participate in the elections, as he is in an unconscious state, in agony.
Glushkov's participation in the elections could prevent the election of Melnikov and Novikov! To fail Novikov and Melnikov was the main goal of Dorodnitsyn and Tikhonov!
<….>
The monstrous intention of Dorodnitsyn to use the voice of the dying Glushkov and other methods of his behavior in these elections led to the fact that Alexandra Ignatievna and Dorodnitsyn had a very unpleasant collision in the corridor. But she doesn't want me to describe it.
Other elections, I think, were no less difficult, but I have already forgotten about it.
Sardanashvili recalls:
The building of the “academic vertical” gave rise to a tough organizational struggle in Soviet science.
Departments, laboratories, institutes were created for academicians, places were allocated. Therefore, the stakes were high - the loser became marginalized.
Методы борьбы были самые грязные: интриги, доносы, хождения в ЦК, срыв командировок и публикаций, задержка диссертаций и даже «политика», хотя в те годы обходились уже без арестов и расстрелов. Нередко организационной борьбе придавалась антисемитская или, наоборот, сионистская направленность.
Many stories can be cited.
Why, for example, was the State Optical Institute (GOI) named after S. I. Vavilov?
Its founder in 1918 and its supervisor until 1932 was D.S. Rozhdestvensky. But D.S. Rozhdestvensky had an acute conflict with A.F. Ioffe, so much so that Rozhdestvensky only once crossed the threshold of the Leningrad Institute of Physics and Technology, when Niels Bohr spoke there.
And Rozhdestvensky "left", and S. I. Vavilov, who permanently lived in Moscow, became the scientific director of the Leningrad GOI.
But in 1950, at the height of the struggle against "cosmopolitanism", they "ate" A.F. Ioffe himself. He was removed from the post of director and even removed from the Academic Council of the LPTI, which he had created and headed for many years, and A.P. Komar from FIAN was appointed director of the LPTI.
Elections to the Academy of Sciences were also in fact a farce: everything was discussed in advance among “friends” and in the department of science of the Central Committee of the CPSU. For example, it would not be an exaggeration to say that all Soviet theoretical physics came out of the theoretical department and the scientific seminar of Ya. I. Frenkel in the pre-war Leningrad Physicotechnical Institute.
Back in 1929 Ya. I. Frenkel was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences. However, he was always outside the groups, and never became an academician.
Once, at the next elections to the USSR Academy of Sciences, there was a big embarrassment.
A.F. Ioffe presented his candidacy in very flattering terms, and according to the results of the secret ballot, there was not a single “yes” ballot, including from Ioffe himself.
<….>
In itself, the number of academicians and corresponding members of the Union Academy of Sciences was not very large - up to 2 thousand for all time in all areas, but many of them combined several posts and were not only in academic, but also in university, and in industry sciences. They headed departments and laboratories, headed research institutes and scientific centers, and were members of various councils, commissions and editorial boards. If he is an academician in a completely different field of science, he is still the scientific elite. Elitism extended to the scientific environment of the academician, and to everything that had the adjective "academic".
Such academic snobbery is remarkably manifested in the letter of V. A. Fok, where he is sincerely indignant: “It seems to me that, according to Comrade. Kaftanov, there are two approximately scientifically equivalent groups of physicists: “university” and “academic”.
But snobbery was the most innocent thing. It is worse if an academician “starts up” in one or another scientific direction. Everyone who disagreed scientifically with him turned into marginals - not necessarily at his personal will, but simply automatically - from the point of view of the scientific community.
At times, whole areas of science were monopolized in this way.
Departments, laboratories, institutes were created for academicians, places were allocated. Therefore, the stakes were high - the loser became marginalized.
Методы борьбы были самые грязные: интриги, доносы, хождения в ЦК, срыв командировок и публикаций, задержка диссертаций и даже «политика», хотя в те годы обходились уже без арестов и расстрелов. Нередко организационной борьбе придавалась антисемитская или, наоборот, сионистская направленность.
Many stories can be cited.
Why, for example, was the State Optical Institute (GOI) named after S. I. Vavilov?
Its founder in 1918 and its supervisor until 1932 was D.S. Rozhdestvensky. But D.S. Rozhdestvensky had an acute conflict with A.F. Ioffe, so much so that Rozhdestvensky only once crossed the threshold of the Leningrad Institute of Physics and Technology, when Niels Bohr spoke there.
And Rozhdestvensky "left", and S. I. Vavilov, who permanently lived in Moscow, became the scientific director of the Leningrad GOI.
But in 1950, at the height of the struggle against "cosmopolitanism", they "ate" A.F. Ioffe himself. He was removed from the post of director and even removed from the Academic Council of the LPTI, which he had created and headed for many years, and A.P. Komar from FIAN was appointed director of the LPTI.
Elections to the Academy of Sciences were also in fact a farce: everything was discussed in advance among “friends” and in the department of science of the Central Committee of the CPSU. For example, it would not be an exaggeration to say that all Soviet theoretical physics came out of the theoretical department and the scientific seminar of Ya. I. Frenkel in the pre-war Leningrad Physicotechnical Institute.
Back in 1929 Ya. I. Frenkel was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences. However, he was always outside the groups, and never became an academician.
Once, at the next elections to the USSR Academy of Sciences, there was a big embarrassment.
A.F. Ioffe presented his candidacy in very flattering terms, and according to the results of the secret ballot, there was not a single “yes” ballot, including from Ioffe himself.
<….>
In itself, the number of academicians and corresponding members of the Union Academy of Sciences was not very large - up to 2 thousand for all time in all areas, but many of them combined several posts and were not only in academic, but also in university, and in industry sciences. They headed departments and laboratories, headed research institutes and scientific centers, and were members of various councils, commissions and editorial boards. If he is an academician in a completely different field of science, he is still the scientific elite. Elitism extended to the scientific environment of the academician, and to everything that had the adjective "academic".
Such academic snobbery is remarkably manifested in the letter of V. A. Fok, where he is sincerely indignant: “It seems to me that, according to Comrade. Kaftanov, there are two approximately scientifically equivalent groups of physicists: “university” and “academic”.
But snobbery was the most innocent thing. It is worse if an academician “starts up” in one or another scientific direction. Everyone who disagreed scientifically with him turned into marginals - not necessarily at his personal will, but simply automatically - from the point of view of the scientific community.
At times, whole areas of science were monopolized in this way.
So, now you are aware of the academic and political situation in the country for 1970-1971 - the beginning of the development of Elbrus, the completion of the A-35 and the beginning of the A-135.
Bonus question - how did serious people cope, who needed computing power not for showing off and sawing, but for making money?
Ministry of Oil, for example, or geologists?
Moreover, they earned the USSR 90% of the budget.
And they coped very simply - they persuaded CoCom and from the mid-1960s they bought American supercomputers, naturally and brazenly!
As it turned out, according to recent studies, at least seven (!) CDC Cyber were imported into the USSR, each costing more than 5 million rubles bought for gold (even Sakhalin geologists had one), and a couple of top Burroughs.
In the 1980s, when the detente ended due to the stupid Afghan adventure, geologists did not give a damn about dismantling and sawing the stupid MEP and MRP and quietly turned to the third, hidden player - the Ministry of Instrument Engineering, which in a couple of years rolled out to them a chic massively parallel supercomputer PS -2000 (and later PS-3000), with a performance of three Elbrus.
These machines were developed for geological exploration and remained exclusive to the Ministry of Railways for oil and gas workers, working until the mid-1990s.
In the next part, we will move on to the Elbrus circuitry and architecture, and then talk about its role in the A-135 missile defense system.
To be continued ...
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