Cold War Computing

Posted on 3 Aug 2005 at 12:39

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Computers played a vital role in the Cold War battle for technological supremacy. Jon Thompson looks at how espionage and sabotage affected the development of PCs behind the Iron Curtain

Just before the Iron Curtain descended across Europe, Soviet scientists had started hearing about the high-speed digital computers sweeping into laboratories and university departments in the West. World War II had supercharged the potential for technological progress, but the speed at which humans could perform the necessary calculations hindered the pace. Compared to a human, even primitive valve-driven computers performed miraculous feats.

The first electronic computer helped the boffins at Bletchley Park to crack the Nazis' supposedly unbreakable Enigma code. In the US, the military calculated accurate artillery-aiming tables. Soon, everyone wanted access to these computers and they took hold in the public's imagination. But these seemingly magical machines would also find themselves at the heart of a dangerous ideological conflict as governments began drawing Cold War battle lines. Knowledge of the capabilities of digital computing presented Soviet scientists with an opportunity to make giant leaps forward, but it also presented them with a problem, as Communist ideology demanded that scientists discard Western methods. The eventual solution would have far-reaching implications decades later.

IDEOLOGICAL COMPUTING

In September 1950, Mikhail Lavrent'ev, director of Moscow's Institute of Precise Mechanics and Computer Technology, announced in a speech to colleagues that Soviet computing trailed the US by 15 years. Although they understood that machines could crunch numbers, their experiments had produced only a few primitive analogue machines.

According to public records stored at the Central Archive of Social Movements in Moscow, Lavrent'ev showed colleagues some pictures of machines in the West and told them: "Our task is clear. Within five years, we must catch up with foreign countries. We must eliminate the lag in high-speed digital computers. I am confident that our Institute will not betray the trust of the Government and Comrade Stalin, and will overtake and surpass foreign countries." This careful wording reflected the dangerous mood of the times; the 'Computing under Stalin' box on page 195 explains this in more detail.

A few physicists realised the need for serious number-crunching power and decided to play a dangerous game of politics. They decided to protect themselves and their staff from criticism that could result in them being sent to labour camps. Russian computer pioneers such as Sergei Lebedev of the Kiev Electro-Technical Institute declared that the new computers they wanted to build would glorify the Soviet state by carrying out only ideologically correct calculations.

Lebedev's announcement stunned many of his colleagues. Engineer Zinoviy Rabinovich told Radio 4 recently through an interpreter at the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences: "We worked on automated management of space systems. Then in August of 1948, Lebedev told us that our laboratory would work on another problem, on computer science." It was an intriguing call to arms.

COLD FRONT

In a climate of international isolation and domestic suspicion, Lebedev assembled a secret team of 12 designers and 15 technicians at a disused monastery at Feofania, near Kiev. The city had been under brutal Nazi occupation during the war, which had killed three-quarters of its population and destroyed half its buildings. After the team had made the place habitable, Secret Laboratory Number One was ready to start work.